An encyclopedic reference for researchers and practitioners but also accessible for general readers due to Rosen’s lively...
A richly documented history of the rise—and threatened future—of antibiotics.
Before the invention of antibiotics, doctors practiced “heroic medicine,” rebalancing the body’s humors with bloodletting, blistering, purges, enemas, and other primitive techniques. But in the late 1800s came Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, and suddenly the world knew that cholera, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and other maladies were caused by invisible microbes: bacteria. So began the hunt for remedies. There were some successes—antitoxin for diphtheria, a vaccine for anthrax—but competition and venomous rivalries prevailed, pitting Pasteur against Koch, France against Germany. Rosen’s (The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century, 2014, etc.) warts-and-all sketches of the key figures serve as refreshing antidotes to the hero-worship texts we read as schoolchildren. The author also deftly contrasts Germany’s synthetic dye industry, which funded research that led to Paul Ehrlich’s Salvarsan for syphilis, with the feeble research support elsewhere. But the real revolution in remedies had to wait until World War II and the rediscovery of penicillin, when British scientists came to America for help in the fermentation process needed to generate copious amounts of the extract. Then came Selman Waksman, who coined the word “antibiotic” and found in a soil sample a bacterial strain that produced its own antibacterial product that worked against TB. The race was on for other useful soil microbes, and numerous drug companies emerged (and merged), from small producers of herbals and botanicals to big-time generators of lucrative broad-spectrum antibiotics. Rosen also charts the course of the FDA and the development of testing and safety protocols. Unfortunately, the current scene is ominous. Antibiotic resistance is serious and continues to grow thanks to low dosages of antibiotics still allowed in animal feeds. Rosen offers some hope regarding new approaches to combat resistance, but they seem meager.
An encyclopedic reference for researchers and practitioners but also accessible for general readers due to Rosen’s lively depiction of the people, places, and politics that color the history of the fight against infectious disease.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-42810-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.
Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.
The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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