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RABID

Name: RABID
Author: Bill Wasik
ISBN: 978-0-670-02373-8

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST DIABOLICAL VIRUS

by Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 2012

Surprisingly fun reading about a fascinating malady.

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From a husband-and-wife team, a literate look at the history of one of humankind’s oldest and most frightening scourges.

Wiredsenior editor Wasik (And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, 2009)and veterinarian Murphy survey literature, cultural history and medical science to tell the story of a disease that has plagued humans wherever they have attracted the company of dogs and other feral animals. Rabies infects not only the bodies of the unfortunate few who have contracted the disease, but also more generally, our fears and imagination. The authors plausibly postulate that the “rage” that made Hector such a terrifying enemy in the Iliad was modeled on rabies; lyssa, the word that describes Hector’s savagery, is the same term Greeks used to describe rabid dogs. So what makes rabid animals so mad? According to Wasik and Murphy, rabies is a slow-working virus that almost uniquely affects the nerves. Once in the brain, it inhibits the autonomic nervous system and manifests in the victim’s foaming at the mouth and hydrophobia (aversion to water). According to the authors, rabies, for which there was no protection or cure until Louis Pasteur’s vaccine of the 1880s, is the primary reason for humanity’s long-term love-hate relationship with canines. “Rabies coevolved to live in the dog, and the dog coevolved to live with us,” they write, “and this confluence, the three of us, is far too combustible a thing.” Fear of rabies may have been behind some other ancient nightmares: the big, bad wolf of fairy tales, the werewolf and vampire of gothic romances and even the zombies so popular today. As entertaining as they are on rabies in culture, the authors also eruditely report on medicine and public health issues through history, from ancient Assyria to Bali to Manhattan in the last five years, showing that while the disease may be contained, it may never be fully conquered.

Surprisingly fun reading about a fascinating malady.

Pub Date: July 23, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-670-02373-8

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
OUR KINDRED CREATURES
by Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy

- BOOK REVIEW
AND THEN THERE’S THIS
by Bill Wasik

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MAPPING FATE

A MEMOIR OF FAMILY, RISK, AND GENETIC RESEARCH

by Alice Wexler ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1995

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A moving personal narrative about a family confronting Huntington's disease, interwoven with a journalistic account of the biomedical research that found the gene responsible and may one day find the cure. In 1968, Wexler's mother was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, a devastating neurological illness that often leads to madness and is always fatal. Historian Wexler (Occidental College; Emma Goldman, 1984) then learned that she and her sister, Nancy, each had a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disease from their mother. While Wexler's father organized the Hereditary Disease Foundation to support Huntington's research, and her sister became a researcher, Wexler felt shame over her failure to get as actively involved. She reports that her own diary, one ``obsessed with self-analysis,'' rarely mentioned Huntington's and then only in connection with her mother, never with herself. For years, the family watched Wexler's mother's progressive deterioration, and the daughters watched themselves for symptoms. A research breakthrough in 1983 led to a predictive test that could identify those who would develop the illness years before any symptoms appeared. In the most gripping part of the book, Wexler describes her feelings about living with uncertainty and her decision not to take the test. The research story, which makes up a large portion of the book, is less compelling than the personal one, but the account of fieldwork in a village in Venezuela where nearly every family has members with Huntington's is fascinating. Wexler is at her best when writing about human beings. At one point she speaks of her sister as having ``the insight of a woman at risk, who understands emotionally as well as intellectually the tremendous costs of this illness.'' The same may be said of Wexler. A revealing memoir that tells as much about living at risk as it does about Huntington's.

Pub Date: June 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8129-1710-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Times/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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GIANT BLUEFIN

by Douglas Whynott ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1995

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Whynott takes readers out to sea with ``the true sons of the whalers of old''—the men who make their living harpooning bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Cod to Maine. Only 200 harpoon permits are issued to East coast fishermen each year, and about 30 of their boats, says Whynott (English/Mount Holyoke; Following the Bloom, not reviewed), actually harvest any fish. There is no daily limit for harpoon fishermen (regular permit-holders are allowed but one tuna per day), but the total quota for the entire western Atlantic is 53 tons—about 240 fish. Whynott followed the fortunes of Bob Sampson and his son, Brad, for the 1992 and 1993 seasons. Like most harpoon fishermen based on Cape Cod, the Sampsons employ a spotter plane to locate schools of giant bluefin. The pilot will sometimes watch for humpback whales, which, like tuna, feed on herring and mackerel. When a school is spotted, the boat races to the area and one man climbs into the pulpit wielding a 12-foot-long harpoon, usually of aluminum, with a bronze ``dart'' wired for 800 volts. Thanks to the sushi boom, one throw can bag a fish that will bring as much as $50,000 at the Japanese auction houses. Bluefin tuna can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh as much as 1,500 lbs., but most are in the 300- to 500- lb. range. The Sampsons, who helped organize a group of Cape Cod fishermen to deal directly with the Japanese, got an average of $16.50 per pound for their fish in 1992; they grossed almost $200,000 for the 1993 season. Not bad, notes Whynott, for a fish that just 20 years ago was sold as cat food for five cents a pound. Whynott's natural history of the giant bluefin tuna, its mating and migratory habits, and his profiles of the Cape Cod fishermen and their lifestyle, is engagingly rendered.