Epigenomics: From Chromatin Biology to Therapeutics

in order to encourage them to have some time and patience for the next science writer who knocks on their door. AA: That was my next question. Physicians and scientists usually have precious little free time for pleasure reading, let alone keeping up with scientific literature. How could they benefit from reading Spillover? Some concerns I heard were that there are too many details here that you and I would consider texture in a story. Professionals might want to get to the bottom line, fast. DQ: What I've tried to do in Spillover is to encompass a lot of very important and very complicated scientific information in a package that reads like a guilty pleasure. Sugar coating it is a little bit too cynical a way to put it. I've tried to create a book that is interesting to people who love books and who love reading. But also it delivers a whole lot of education to people on a very important subject. Why should a busy medical professional read this book to learn about zoonotic diseases when he or she perhaps could read a 100-page review article and get much of the same information? My answer this: They should read it because this is a book that can be an important tool to them. He or she might discover that this a book that they would like to give to his or her brother-in-law, sister, nephew, niece who's considering going to veterinary school, and mother who is saying, " What is it that you do again? " I hope that I've created a very valuable tool to bring this information to a lot of people who ordinarily would not be patient enough or interested enough to consume this information. I would say the scientific professionals could benefit from reading this book because then they know what's out there, that it can be a tool for them to try and explain this subject to other members of the general public. AA: What you are really getting at there is a motivation for writers to write about science. DQ: Yes. We're always working for two audiences. We're working for an audience that is in front of us and an audience that we can see when we glance back over our shoulder. The audience in front of us is the general public, and the scientists who are our sources are the audience …