Makes a strong case that people get more excited by miraculous cures than by vaccines that save unseen multitudes by...
Comprehensive biography of the self-effacing, amazingly productive scientist who developed vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, hepatitis A and B, pneumococcus, meningococcus and Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB—a child killer).
Himself a co-developer of rotavirus vaccine that prevents a diarrheal disease in children, Offit (Pediatrics/Univ. of Pennsylvania) feels that recognition is long overdue for Maurice Hilleman. The author interviewed Hilleman not long before his death in 2005, following 48 years with pharmaceutical giant Merck. His biography focuses on the scientific career, which says it all: Hilleman had no hobbies, he worked himself and his staff hard (exercising a particularly hot and profane temper), sparing only times to be with wife and daughters. Indeed, the throat swabbings of one daughter provided the mumps virus used to develop one of Hilleman’s early successes. Offit does well in capturing the evolution of vaccine technology, from attenuating the virulence of live viruses by passage through other species’ tissues or cell cultures to genetic engineering tricks that induce bacteria to make the proteins needed to evoke an immune response. The author also revisits the reprehensible but once-accepted practice of testing vaccines (including Salk’s polio vaccine) on institutionalized mentally retarded children. Poor living conditions made these kids vulnerable to infections and hence likely to benefit from vaccines, argued researchers, who also tested themselves and their children. Bad press has plagued other vaccines. Fear of contamination with monkey viruses led to the use of pure fetal cells for growing virus, inciting the wrath of religious groups. More recently, a hullabaloo was raised by claims that inoculation with the one-shot measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (another Hilleman triumph) causes autism. Offit dismisses such claims, pointing to the bad science—and bad scientists—responsible while lamenting the harm done.
Makes a strong case that people get more excited by miraculous cures than by vaccines that save unseen multitudes by preventing disease in the first place.Pub Date: June 12, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-122795-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Smithsonian/Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
While he wastes some time exposing cliches—Indians in westerns, unworthy sequels—that are cliches to expose, Eco...
Popular novelist (The Name of the Rose, 1983; Foucault's Pendulum, 1989) and notorious semiologist (at the Univ. of Bologna) Eco shows himself to be a journalist as well with this generally diverting volume of short pieces.
Eco calls these short essays diario minimo—minimal diaries—after the magazine column where he first published a series of such efforts (previously collected in Misreadings). The work presented here, much of which dates from the late '80s and early '90s, celebrates, or more often condemns, postmodern life in a style familiar to American readers. Occasional parodic fantasies in the mode of Borges or Calvino find Eco exploring the intriguing, if absurd, notion of a map in 1:1 scale, chronicling race relations in a future universe populated by humorously bizarre alien life-forms, or describing watches whose features cause one to lose track of the time. But Eco focuses on articulating his amusing complaints, analyzing our quotidian myths with light touches and lamentations that will recall Andy Rooney and Erma Bombeck—at best, an academic Mike Royko—sooner than Roland Barthes. Pieces on once-current events have been carefully excluded, but most of these essays remain essentially journalistic in their devotion to exploring contemporary life. The title piece pits Eco against an English hotel bureaucracy intent on making it difficult for him to refrigerate an expensive salmon that he has brought from Copenhagen; others mock "how-to'' essays—on fax machines and cellular telephones, for example; there are cautionary tales of encounters with Amtrak trains and Roman cabs. All have as their subtext the chaos brought in the wake of unbridled technological innovation and intercontinental travel.
While he wastes some time exposing cliches—Indians in westerns, unworthy sequels—that are cliches to expose, Eco entertains with his clever reflections and with his unique persona, the featured player in his stories.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-100136-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Esposito may not tell all, but he comes close in this brutally honest, yet loyal, memoir of his days with the King. From when they met in the Army to the afternoon when he was one of the first to discover the dead body of Elvis Presley where he had collapsed from his toilet throne (Esposito was the one who raised his pajama trousers to avoid embarrassment), Presley's right-hand man was in a position to know the inside scoop. He and Oumano (Paul Newman, 1989) describe Elvis as being like a little boy who spent his wealth making himself and the people around him happy. The anecdotes are endless as this pivotal member of the ``Memphis Mafia'' comes clean on the partying Elvis's parade of girlfriends and his suitcase full of sexy videotapes and Polaroids of Priscilla (Esposito handed it to her the moment she arrived at Graceland for the funeral). Esposito tells of the Elvis who stopped passersby to give them money or gifts, who would decide suddenly that ten or so of his friends all needed Harleys to race around Bel Air, who would not flinch at buying a car for family or friends who were loyal to him, and who made an infamous visit to see President Nixon. But he also gives up the goods on the Elvis who was hopelessly self-indulgent, constantly demonstrating his dubious karate skills, buying people off with expensive gifts rather than admitting he was wrong, and finally dying a prisoner in his own bedroom, uninterested in facing new challenges and addicted to prescription drugs. Video rentals of Girls! Girls! Girls! are sure to surge so people can look for the scene in which Elvis sports an erection in his too-tight pants. While apologetic and loyalist at times, Esposito doesn't let the King off too easy. (16 pages of b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-79507-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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