by Thomas Washing ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2018
An informative look at a promising method for saving children’s lives in underdeveloped regions of the world.
An entrepreneur’s account of a spirited mission to curb infant deaths in underdeveloped, poverty-stricken nations.
Veteran Colorado venture capitalist Washing (co-author: Passion for Skiing, 2011) first heard of life-science company PanTheryx’s global health initiative from a business acquaintance in 2010. He’d invested in the work of the company’s founder, entrepreneur, and inventor Tim Starzl, years before. Starzl developed a revolutionary, powdered treatment called DiaResQ, designed to halt acute, infectious diarrhea in young children. The grim statistics regarding this malady that Washing provides in this book are startling and distressing; it’s mostly just a nuisance for young children in the developed world, but it kills about 2,200 kids each day in other regions, caused by ingestion of contaminated food and water. The author writes passionately about the potential for saving these children’s lives in this inspired and fulfilling chronicle of humanitarianism and good will. Washing begins by familiarizing readers with PanTheryx founder Starzl’s history and corporate experience, beginning with the iconoclastic legacy of the inventor’s father, Tom Starzl, who was a pioneer in immunological disease prevention. Together with his wife, Bimla, the younger Starzl visited India and witnessed firsthand the “perplexing mixture of physical, cultural, and environmental factors at play in making pediatric diarrhea so pernicious in the developing world.” The discovery, development, clinical testing, and eventual marketing of his radical, broad-spectrum, immunotherapeutic powdered food product would take time, patience, and essential angel funding from Washing, his firm Sequel Venture Partners, and other investors. In this work, which also serves as a promotional vehicle for DiaResQ, Washing describes how his initial interest in the project bloomed. Readers who are interested in the mechanics and financial intricacies of startup health care-business investment will find the insider information in this book to be informative and encouraging. Washing’s overall scrutiny of the “witches’ brew of technical expertise, managerial skill, capital, and entrepreneurial culture” proves to be engrossing throughout. Washing also contributes specific commentary on the inner workings of investor partnerships—how they’re initiated, nurtured, and (hopefully) made lucrative. Readers who have more interest in the medical aspects of the project will be satisfied by a statistics-rich chapter on the lethal effects of infectious diarrhea-causing rotavirus in underdeveloped countries, and how PanTheryx’s bovine colostrum-based product functions in the bodies of ailing, immunocompromised children. He delves further into the issues at hand by offering a cross section of other available treatments and solutions and their availability in impoverished nations—research that will likely be both compelling and alarming to readers who live in wealthier nations. Washing also reveals that the development process, as a whole, wasn’t an easy one; as the efficacy of PanTheryx’s therapy became known, he says, regulatory red tape hindered the ability of the company to dispense and sell DiaResQ. Ultimately, by encouraging entrepreneurs and startup founders to “do well by doing good,” Washing’s narrative will instruct readers on how to best channel skills and enthusiasm toward altruistic goals.
An informative look at a promising method for saving children’s lives in underdeveloped regions of the world.Pub Date: July 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-7321225-0-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Leather Apron Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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