New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers: Tales of Parasites and People

New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers: Tales of Parasites and People PDF Author: Robert S. Desowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039329238X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The medical tapestry of the world is full of organisms too small to see, carried by flying and creeping creatures too numerous to eradicate. A while ago, DDT and the antimalarial drug chloroquine seemed sure to make us all safe from such invisible assault. It was not to be. The mosquito has become resistant to DDT; malaria is on the rise; although tapeworms rarely turn up any longer in the most lovingly prepared New York City gefilte fish, a worm may inhabit your sashimi; some strains of gonorrhea actually thrive on penicillin; there is even a parasite for the higher tax brackets—the "nymph of Nantucket"; and there are new ailments—legionnaire's disease, Lassa fever, and new strains of influenza. In the long run, one might bet on the insects and the germs. Meanwhile Dr. Robert Desowitz has written a delightful and instructive book.

New Guinea Tapeworms And Jewish Grandmothers

New Guinea Tapeworms And Jewish Grandmothers PDF Author: Robert S Desowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393304268
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A medical ecologist examines the threat posed by disease-carrying parasites and insects and identifies the conditions--miracle drugs, destruction of natural controls--that have encouraged them to flourish.

New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers

New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers PDF Author: Robert S. Desowitz
Publisher: Avon Books
ISBN: 9780380640065
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A medical ecologist examines the threat posed by disease-carrying parasites and insects and identifies the conditions--miracle drugs, destruction of natural controls--that have encouraged them to flourish

Parasite Rex

Parasite Rex PDF Author: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074320011X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites control the minds of their hosts, sending them to their destruction. IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites are masters of chemical warfare and camouflage, able to cloak themselves with their hosts' own molecules. IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE parasites steer the course of evolution, where the majority of species are parasites. WELCOME TO EARTH. For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and in the darkest shadows of science. Yet these creatures are among the world's most successful and sophisticated organisms. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer deftly balances the scientific and the disgusting as he takes readers on a fantastic voyage. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the fetid parasite haven of southern Sudan, Zimmer graphically brings to life how parasites can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead. This thorough, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe.

Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus

Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus PDF Author: Robert S. Desowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393325461
Category : Communicable diseases
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The world has been confident that biomedical science would protect it from devastating plagues. The wake-up call sounded at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, West Nile virus, malaria and African sleeping sickness. Desowitz traces the histories of these diseases and the issues people must confront about them.

The Perfect Predator

The Perfect Predator PDF Author: Steffanie Strathdee
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316418072
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
An electrifying memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life-and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. "A memoir that reads like a thriller." -New York Times Book Review "A fascinating and terrifying peek into the devastating outcomes of antibiotic misuse-and what happens when standard health care falls short." -Scientific American Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world. Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure. A nail-biting medical mystery, The Perfect Predator is a story of love and survival against all odds, and the (re)discovery of a powerful new weapon in the global superbug crisis.

Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?: Torrid Diseases in a Temperate World

Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?: Torrid Diseases in a Temperate World PDF Author: Robert S. Desowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393254046
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
We live in a medical fool's paradise, comforted, believing our sanitized Western world is safe from the microbes and parasites of the tropics. Not so, nor was it ever so. Past--and present--tell us that tropical diseases are as American as the heart attack; yellow fever lived happily for centuries in Philadelphia. Malaria liked it fine in Washington, not to mention in the Carolinas where it took right over. The Ebola virus stopped off in Baltimore, and the Mexican pig tapeworm has settled comfortably among orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. This book starts with the little creatures the first American immigrants brought with them on the long walk from Siberia 50,000 years ago. It moves on to all that unwanted baggage that sailed over with the Spanish, French, and the English and killed native Americans in huge numbers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (The native Americans, it appears, got some revenge by passing syphilis--including Pinta, a feisty strain of syphilis--back to Europe with Columbus's returning sailors.) Nor have the effects of these diseases on people and economics been fully appreciated. Did slavery last so long because Africans were semi-immune to malaria and yellow fever, while Southern whites of all ranks fell in thousands to those diseases? In the final chapters, Robert S. Desowitz takes us through the Good Works of the twentieth century, Kid Rockefeller and the Battling Hookworm, and the rearrival of malaria; and he offers a glimpse into the future with a host of "Doomsday bugs" and jet-setting viruses that make life, quite literally, a jungle out there.

Parasitology

Parasitology PDF Author: Eric Loker
Publisher: Garland Science
ISBN: 1317407725
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
Parasitology: A Conceptual Approach focuses on the conceptual basis of parasitology, with the goal of providing students with an enriched view of parasites and their biology. Concentrating on concepts will enable readers to gain a broader perspective that will increase their ability to think critically about all kinds of parasitic associations. The interfaces between the study of parasitism and prominent biological disciplines such as biodiversity, immunology, ecology, evolution, conservation biology, and disease control are highlighted. Studying individual parasites is an essential part of parasitology so Parasitology: A Conceptual Approach contains an appendix which provides a concise overview of the biology of important human and veterinary parasites. End-of-chapter questions are provided, as is an instructor manual.

Main Street

Main Street PDF Author: Sinclair Lewis
Publisher: First Avenue Editions TM
ISBN: 1728468884
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. First published in 1920, this unabridged edition of the Sinclair Lewis novel is an American classic, considered by many to be his most noteworthy and lasting work. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.

The Onion Book of Known Knowledge

The Onion Book of Known Knowledge PDF Author: The Onion
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 031613323X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the print industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion's compendium of all things known. Replete with an astonishing assemblage of facts, illustrations, maps, charts, threats, blood, and additional fees to edify even the most simple-minded book-buyer, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge is packed with valuable information -- such as the life stages of an Aunt; places to kill one's self in Utica, New York; and the dimensions of a female bucket, or "pail." With hundreds of entries for all 27 letters of the alphabet, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge must be purchased immediately to avoid the sting of eternal ignorance.

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B PDF Author: Baruch S. Blumberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691187231
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
About 375 million people are infected with the hepatitis B virus. It has killed more people than AIDS and also causes millions of cases of liver cancer. The discovery of this deadly virus and the vaccine against it--a vaccine that is sharply decreasing the infection rate worldwide and is probably the first effective cancer vaccine--was one of the great triumphs of twentieth-century medicine. And it almost didn't happen. With wit and insight, this scientific memoir and story of discovery describes how Baruch Blumberg and a team of researchers found a virus they were not looking for and created a vaccine for a disease they previously knew little about--work that took the author around the world and won him the Nobel Prize. Blumberg and his collaborators were investigating relationships between gene distribution and disease susceptibility, research that was yielding interesting data but no real breakthroughs. Many viewed their work as more field trip than science. But, through decades of hard work and investigative twists and turns, their pursuit led to the hepatitis B antigen, the elusive virus itself, and, ultimately, the vaccine. As he takes the reader through the detective work that culminated in his incredible discovery, the author recounts with immediacy exciting moments in the lab and in the field--from a hair-raising flight to Africa to an unpleasant encounter with Alaskan sled dogs. The hepatitis B story is more than a fascinating chronicle of a major discovery. What Blumberg followed to the virus was a trail of remarkable "accidents" that happen when scientists seek answers to interesting questions. Those events, combined with the investigator's determined persistence, resulted in studies that generated a pharmaceutical industry, have far-flung public-health applications, and saved millions of lives.