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Books > Medicine > Other branches of medicine > Pathology > Medical parasitology
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The Malaria Capers - Tales of Parasites and People (Paperback, New Ed)
Loot Price: R572
Discovery Miles 5 720
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The Malaria Capers - Tales of Parasites and People (Paperback, New Ed)
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Loot Price R572
Discovery Miles 5 720
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Tropical medicine is outside the mainstream of biomedical research
in America. Yet, worldwide, malaria continues to ravage millions,
causing between one and two million deaths every year. And malaria
at least is a household word. Not so kala azar, Mogul words that
mean "black sickness," a parasitic disease of the liver and spleen
that causes fever and anemia and commonly proceeds to wasting,
dysentery, and death. The record suggests that kala azar was a new
disease a century ago - a sort of 19th-century AIDS that hit
southeast India in epidemic proportions. It now occurs across
China, Russian Turkestan, Mediterranean Europe, North Africa, and
the coast of Brazil, with little in the way of treatment except for
derivatives of the heavy metal antimony - in short supply and too
expensive for the poor. Here, as in his other popular books (The
Thorn in the Starfish, 1987, etc.), our tropical medicine man on
the scene tells a compelling tale that is half epidemiological
sleuthing, half an account of where we stand today. As always, too,
there is a mixture of wordplay, compassion, and anger to suit the
unfolding of tales that have comic as well as tragic turns and
events that reveal heroism but also stupidity and cupidity. In the
case of kala azar, we learn that the parasite is leishmania
donovani - a protozoan transmitted by the bite of a sandfly.
Prevention is plagued by politics as well as by lack of funding and
ideas. Desowitz summarizes the details of the better - known
malaria story, ending with a sizzling indictment of the Agency for
International Development, complete with corrupt officials and
venal researchers who pocketed funds awarded for vaccine research.
Sad tales, these, that leave the reader with more respect for
nature, less for man. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Reads like a murder mystery. . . . [Desowitz] writes with uncommon lucidity and verse, leaving the reader with a vivid understanding of malaria and other tropical diseases, and the ways in which culture, climate and politics have affected their spread and containment."—New York Times Why, Robert S. Desowitz asks, has biotechnical research on malaria produced so little when it had promised so much? An expert in tropical diseases, Desowtiz searches for answers in this provocative book. "Like such eminent science writers as Stephen Jay Gould and Lewis Thomas, Mr. Desowitz manages to make the basic principles of his subject immediately comprehensible to the general reader. He has also succeeded in giving us a profound appreciation of the ways in which scientific and medical knowledge advances, through hypothesis, error and experiment, through serendipity, dedication, and perseverance."—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "Like a novelist, [Desowitz] draws the reader into the human tragedy of disease. . . . Rich in historical-medical detective stories."—Betty Ann Kevles, Los Angeles Times "A gripping account of how a one-celled protozoan has triumphed over modern science."—Wall Street Journal "Just as it was not necessary to be an astrophysicist to feel the grandeur and scope of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, it is not necessary to be a parasitologist or specialist in tropical medicine to relate to the drama, tragedy and even romance of Desowitz's fascinating and provocative story. . . . Interesting and important."—New England Journal of Medicine
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