Desowitz makes science scintillating, but his message is dead serious: It’s not just bio-terrorists we need to be concerned...
Another idiosyncratic jaunt through the world of tropical diseases from the author of Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria? (1997).
Sometimes irascible, always erudite and entertaining, sensibly alert to the dangers posed by the microscopic world of pathogens, Desowitz has a way with words. The federal bodysnatchers referred to here turn out to be the NIH’s Office of Technology Transfer, which took out a patent on a virus found in a Papua New Guinea tribesman, much to the author’s dismay. That episode is but one chapter in this curmudgeonly work, which takes a look at how we have failed in the fight against malaria and sleeping sickness and examines our readiness to deal with the arrival of new infectious diseases on our own shores. While the search for a vaccine has been going on for decades, malaria still infects some 300 million and kills some 3 million annually, and while elflornithine (called the “wake-up-from-the-dead drug” in tropical Africa) is effective against sleeping sickness, it is also too expensive for poverty-stricken countries already overwhelmed by AIDS. Desowitz uses the blunders in our management of West Nile virus to point out the need for better-trained people, better labs, and increased funding for public health in the US. In a chapter titled “Loose Stools and Troubled Waters,” he examines an outbreak of diarrhea that afflicted 403,000 midwesterners, the largest documented outbreak of a waterborne disease in the US. The Great 1992 Milwaukee Cryptosporidium Horror Show, as Desowitz calls it, revealed that current municipal water-treatment systems simply cannot remove feces-borne Cryptosporidium from the water supply—a problem likely to be exacerbated, he notes, as global warming brings increased rain and swollen rivers contaminated with sewage. Further medical challenges will arise as global warming turns temperate zones tropical, affecting a host of climate-influenced diseases, including cholera.
Desowitz makes science scintillating, but his message is dead serious: It’s not just bio-terrorists we need to be concerned about. (8 illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-393-05185-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (actually manmade, since it was precipitated by a wealthy country club dam which had long been the source of justified misgivings). This then is a routine rundown of the catastrophe of May 31st, 1889, the biggest news story since Lincoln's murder in which thousands died. The most interesting incidental: a baby floated unharmed in its cradle for eighty miles.... Perhaps of local interest-but it lacks the Lord-ly touch.
Pub Date: March 18, 1968
ISBN: 0671207148
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968
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