Overview

Twenty years ago the world slept, confident that biomedical science would protect it from devastating plagues. Our wake-up call sounded at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Then came more unfamiliar pathogens in its wake, such as the West Nile Virus. Meanwhile, the neglected diseases of the Third World, including malaria and African sleeping sickness, festeredtheir victims salvageable only by unaffordable drugs. Robert S. Desowitz traces the histories of these diseases and the issues we must confrontthe morality and legality of patent laws; the effect of global warming on epidemics; public support for the commercial biomedical industry; the growing dissociation of clinicians and public health professionals; and the terrifying shadow of bioterrorism. 8 b/w illustrations.

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9780393051858

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Reviews

Like a novelist, [Desowitz] draws the reader into the human tragedy of disease. Los Angeles Times

"""Like a novelist, [Desowitz] draws the reader into the human tragedy of disease."" Los Angeles Times"

""Like a novelist, [Desowitz] draws the reader into the human tragedy of disease."" Los Angeles Times

Another idiosyncratic jaunt through the world of tropical diseases from the author of Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria? (1997). Sometimes irascible, always erudite and entertaining, sensibly alert to the dangers posed by the microscopic world of pathogens, Desowitz has a way with words. The federal bodysnatchers referred to here turn out to be the NIH's Office of Technology Transfer, which took out a patent on a virus found in a Papua New Guinea tribesman, much to the author's dismay. That episode is but one chapter in this curmudgeonly work, which takes a look at how we have failed in the fight against malaria and sleeping sickness and examines our readiness to deal with the arrival of new infectious diseases on our own shores. While the search for a vaccine has been going on for decades, malaria still infects some 300 million and kills some 3 million annually, and while elflornithine (called the wake-up-from-the-dead drug in tropical Africa) is effective against sleeping sickness, it is also too expensive for poverty-stricken countries already overwhelmed by AIDS. Desowitz uses the blunders in our management of West Nile virus to point out the need for better-trained people, better labs, and increased funding for public health in the US. In a chapter titled Loose Stools and Troubled Waters, he examines an outbreak of diarrhea that afflicted 403,000 midwesterners, the largest documented outbreak of a waterborne disease in the US. The Great 1992 Milwaukee Cryptosporidium Horror Show, as Desowitz calls it, revealed that current municipal water-treatment systems simply cannot remove feces-borne Cryptosporidium from the water supply-a problem likely to be exacerbated, he notes, as global warming brings increased rain and swollen rivers contaminated with sewage. Further medical challenges will arise as global warming turns temperate zones tropical, affecting a host of climate-influenced diseases, including cholera. Desowitz makes science scintillating, but his message is dead serious: It's not just bio-terrorists we need to be concerned about. (8 illustrations, not seen) (Kirkus Reviews)

This is Robert Desowitz's fifth book. He's previously written on malaria and tapeworms, and he admits in his introduction that the New Guinea Virus is a topic generally reserved for the pages of tropical medical textbooks and the dissertations of particularly keen microbiology students. So while this might be the ideal gift for the epidemiologist in your life, does it have what it takes to engage the non-scientific reader? Resoundingly yes. It's an intriguing, sometimes humorous but always informative read. In clear, precise, evocative language Desowitz opens for debate a swathe of moral issues - including the perils of DDT versus unchecked disease, anti-malaria drugs that cost more than Viagra pills to buy but mere pennies to manufacture, and the morality of patenting life-forms. The chapter 'Millions for the Vaccine, But Not One Cent for Defence' is particularly powerful, summing up a problem which most world leaders still refuse to address - that medicine is big business, controlled by large first-world multinationals who, sadly, stand to make more money from treating diseases than by helping to prevent them. As Desowitz traces the path of the New Guinea Virus from Africa to Florida one fact becomes chillingly clear. What the New Guinea Virus, malaria, typhus, sleeping sickness and many of the other diseases which Desowitz discusses have in common is the ease with which they spread. Even the most technologically advanced societies are still relatively defenceless against the microscopic world. It is a chilling thought. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

ROBERT S. DESOWITZ is the author of The Malaria Capers: a thundering good read (The Observer); a cracking good book (John Gribbin, New Scientist); exceptionally well written (The Daily Telegraph) and an astonishing, seamlessly-written book. (Heather Couper, TES).

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