Cannibals, Cows and the CJD Catastrophe

Cannibals, Cows and the CJD Catastrophe PDF Author: Jennifer Cooke
Publisher: Jennifer Cooke
ISBN: 9780091836917
Category : Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This story begins and ends in morgues. It is a chilling medical detective story which traces the explosion of accidentally-acquired CJD (Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease) in humans from the highlands of PNG to fertility programmes in Australia and to the British dining table . It deals with the key characters involved in parallel epidemics both of which first became public knowdege in April 1985. The announcement of a probable beef-related epidemic of a so-called "new-variant" of CJD (Mad Cow's Disease) on March 20, 1996 forced the British Government to admit there may be a lethal contamination of the country's meat products. While the British struggle to allay public fears over beef products, the world also faces a growing epidemic of accidental medical transmission of CJD. This is a disease which kills as devestatingly as AIDS, and as surely as the Ebola virus - but it has a symptom free incubation period that means a generation could pass before the chilling signs of infection emerge. As compelling as a science fiction thriller, this story has serious implications for Australia and countries around the world.

Cannibals, Cows and the CJD Catastrophe

Cannibals, Cows and the CJD Catastrophe PDF Author: Jennifer Cooke
Publisher: Jennifer Cooke
ISBN: 9780091836917
Category : Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book Here

Book Description
This story begins and ends in morgues. It is a chilling medical detective story which traces the explosion of accidentally-acquired CJD (Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease) in humans from the highlands of PNG to fertility programmes in Australia and to the British dining table . It deals with the key characters involved in parallel epidemics both of which first became public knowdege in April 1985. The announcement of a probable beef-related epidemic of a so-called "new-variant" of CJD (Mad Cow's Disease) on March 20, 1996 forced the British Government to admit there may be a lethal contamination of the country's meat products. While the British struggle to allay public fears over beef products, the world also faces a growing epidemic of accidental medical transmission of CJD. This is a disease which kills as devestatingly as AIDS, and as surely as the Ebola virus - but it has a symptom free incubation period that means a generation could pass before the chilling signs of infection emerge. As compelling as a science fiction thriller, this story has serious implications for Australia and countries around the world.

The Trembling Mountain

The Trembling Mountain PDF Author: Robert Klitzman
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
At once a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story, this powerful, first-hand account of life on the frontiers of science tells of the adventures of Dr. Robert Klitzman, whose research provided important keys to understanding Mad Cow Disease, potentially the world's next major epidemic. 75 photos.

The Collectors of Lost Souls

The Collectors of Lost Souls PDF Author: Warwick Anderson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421433613
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This riveting account of medical detective work traces the story of kuru, a fatal brain disease, and the pioneering scientists who spent decades searching for its cause and cure. Winner, William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine Winner, Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Winner, General History Award, New South Wales Premier's History Awards When whites first encountered the Fore people in the isolated highlands of colonial New Guinea during the 1940s and 1950s, they found a people in the grip of a bizarre epidemic. Women and children succumbed to muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, and lack of coordination, until death inevitably supervened. Facing extinction, the Fore attributed their unique and terrifying affliction to a particularly malign form of sorcery. In The Collectors of Lost Souls, Warwick Anderson tells the story of the resilience of the Fore through this devastating plague, their transformation into modern people, and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologists. Battling competing scientists and the colonial authorities, the brilliant and troubled American doctor D. Carleton Gajdusek determined that the cause of the epidemic—kuru—was a new and mysterious agent of infection, which he called a slow virus (now called a prion). Anthropologists and epidemiologists soon realized that the Fore practice of eating their loved ones after death had spread the slow virus. Though the Fore were never convinced, Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Now revised and updated, the book includes an extensive new afterword that situates its impact within the fields of science and technology studies and the history of science. Additionally, the author now reflects on his long engagement with the scientists and the people afflicted, describing what has happened to them since the end of kuru. This astonishing story links first-contact encounters in New Guinea with laboratory experiments in Bethesda, Maryland; sorcery with science; cannibalism with compassion; and slow viruses with infectious proteins, reshaping our understanding of what it means to do science.

Dinner with a Cannibal

Dinner with a Cannibal PDF Author: Carole A Travis-Henikoff
Publisher: Santa Monica Press
ISBN: 1595809961
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Presenting the history of cannibalism in concert with human evolution, Dinner with a Cannibal takes its readers on an astonishing trip around the world and through history, examining its subject from every angle in order to paint the incredible, multifaceted panoply that is the reality of cannibalism. At the heart of Carole A. Travis-Henikoff’s book is the question of how cannibalism began with the human species and how it has become an unspeakable taboo today. At a time when science is being battered by religions and failing teaching methods, Dinner with a Cannibal presents slices of multiple sciences in a readable, understandable form nested within a wealth of data. With history, paleoanthropology, science, gore, sex, murder, war, culinary tidbits, medical facts, and anthropology filling its pages, Dinner with a Cannibal presents both the light and dark side of the human story; the story of how we came to be all the things we are today.

Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything PDF Author: Randi Hutter Epstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
A Science News Favorite Science Book of 2018 “A sweeping, glorious story of hormones, threaded through with sex, suffering, neurology, biology, medicine, and self-discovery.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee Metabolism, behavior, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty, and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein reveals the “invigorating history” (Nature) of hormones and the age-old quest to control them through the back rooms, basements, and labs where endocrinology began.

The Social Construction of Disease

The Social Construction of Disease PDF Author: Kiheung Kim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113423712X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
A historical exploration of scientific disputes on the causation of so-called ‘prion diseases’, this fascinating book covers diseases including Scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Firstly tracing the twentieth-century history of disease research and biomedicine, the text then focuses on the relations between scientific practice and wider social transformations, before finally building upon the sociologically informed methodological framework. Incisive and thought-provoking, The Social Construction of Disease provides a valuable contribution to that well-established tradition of social history of science, which refers primarily to the theoretical works of the sociology of scientific knowledge.

Dying for a Hamburger

Dying for a Hamburger PDF Author: Dr. Murray Waldman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466872152
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
One in ten people older than sixty-five, and nearly half of those older than eighty-five, have Alzheimer's disease. It's widely accepted nowadays that memory loss comes with age. Alzheimer's currently robs at least 15 million people of their identity worldwide. This book makes the controversial claim that eating meat may contribute to the development of the disease. In Dying for a Hamburger, Dr. Murray Waldman and Marjorie Lamb draw upon documentary evidence, historical testimony, and inspired speculation to suggest that Alzheimer's: - is a new disease--elderly people did not experience symptoms of dementia in such alarming numbers in the past - began appearing after modern meat production techniques were introduced - has soared in nations where these techniques are used - hardly exists in cultures where meat consumption is low - has been attributed to many deaths that are actually the human equivalent of mad cow disease. They present startling evidence that Alzheimer's may be part of a family of diseases linked to malformed proteins known as prions. They hypothesize that the conditions that allow these brain disorders to be triggered are similar. They propose that mad cow, its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), other encephalitic diseases, and Alzheimer's may have a common antecedent. We know that a form of CJD is transmitted to humans who eat contaminated beef. And we are becoming increasingly aware of the need to monitor the meat supply closely to avoid a repetition of the mad cow scare in Great Britain. But suppose that Alzheimer's also involves prions--the evidence that points in this direction is growing. And suppose that Alzheimer's is also associated with tainted meat. This conclusion seems far-fetched--at first. In this compelling book, the authors come to a frightening conclusion about our seemingly insatiable hunger for hamburgers. Destined to provoke heated argument, this book on the prevention of Alzheimer's is definitely food for thought.

Product Liability in Comparative Perspective

Product Liability in Comparative Perspective PDF Author: Duncan Fairgrieve
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139448031
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This book examines the law of product liability from a comparative perspective. With the European Directive on Product Liability enacted over 20 years ago, this publication analyses the state of product liability in a number of key jurisdictions including both Western European countries and New Member States. Account is also taken of developments further afield, including the United States and Japan. Distinguished contributors, including a high court judge, European Commission official, leading litigators and academics, provide individual country reports and a number of integrated comparative studies. The book is designed for practical use by legal practitioners, academics, students and others interested in the area of contract, tort, civil procedure and multi-party litigation. In particular, practitioners will find the country reports an essential reference point.

Normal at Any Cost

Normal at Any Cost PDF Author: Susan Cohen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440686459
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
A fascinating story of medical experimentation, parental love, and the extreme measures taken to make children fit within ?the norm.? Most people rarely think about their height beyond a little wishing and hoping. But for the parents of children who are ridiculed by their peers for being extraordinarily tall or extraordinarily short, height can cause great anguish. For decades, the medical establishment has responded to these worries by prescribing controversial treatments and therapies for children who fall outside of the ?normal? height range. While some have benefited, many have suffered from devastating side effects. In this riveting book, Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove provide a voice for the parents, doctors, scientists, and pharmaceutical companies involved in these experimental treatments. They also tell the story of the boys and girls themselves, many of them now grown, who were subjected to a wide range of non-FDA-approved medical procedures. These treatments? which consisted of extreme doses of estrogen, pituitary glands taken from both animals and human cadavers, and testosterone injections?often had disastrous side effects. Who is to say how tall is too tall, and how short is too short? For many of the individuals represented in this book, the answers have been clear?and they are grateful to the medical industry for improving upon nature. For others, left in the wake of this same science, the answers are fueled by tragic regret. The authors explore the dueling motives behind these procedures? with parents desperate to help their children ?fit in? and doctors and scientists hungry for scientific breakthroughs. Combining extensive research and in-depth interviews, Normal at Any Cost is the first book to place a human face on this complex and ethically charged medical history.

Infectious Processes

Infectious Processes PDF Author: E. Seguin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230524397
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
In recent years a number of scholars have analyzed the management of BSE, also known as 'mad cow disease'. The BSE crisis is regarded by many as an example of the failure of officials and politicians to handle risk situations. Yet, BSE is also characterized by a unique trait, that is, the infectious agent that causes it. Thus far, no one has paid attention to the fact that BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy's (TSEs) are allegedly caused by a novel agent - a prion - distinct from all other known infectious agents such as bacteria and viruses. The prion hypothesis was introduced by the American scientist Stanley Prusiner in 1982. It immediately created a controversy among scientists and is still rejected by some. Yet, despite this lack of consensus in the scientific community, Prusiner was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1997. This book analyzes the introduction, reception, development and consequences of the prion hypothesis. It shows that BSE is a unique case not only in virtue of its political mismanagement but also because its infectious agent has created a form of revolution in biology.