Deadly Outbreaks: How Medical Detectives Save Lives Threatened by Killer Pandemics, Exotic Viruses, and Drug-Resistant Parasites

Even sherlock Holmes would be proud of this astute group of professionals. Booklistdespite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors. Any data gathered in the field must be stripped of human sorrows and carefully analyzed into hard statistics.

Author alexandra levitt, PhD, is an expert on emerging diseases and other public health threats. Meet the resourceful investigators—doctors, veterinarians, and research scientists—and discover the truth behind these cases and more. This edition features a new introduction by the author! Here she shares insider accounts she’s collected that go behind the alarming headlines we’ve seen in the media: mysterious food poisonings, unexplained deaths at a children’s hospital, flocks of birds dropping dead out of the sky, a strange neurologic disease afflicting slaughterhouse workers, and drug-resistant malaria running rampant in a refugee camp.

Part homicide detective, part physician, these medical investigators must view the problem from every angle, exhausting every possible source of contamination. Portrays epidemiologists as disease detectives who tirelessly hunt for clues and excel at deductive reasoning. Vaccines and antibiotics, the mainstays of modern medicine, have not been able to conquer infectious microbes because of their amazing ability to adapt, evolve, and spread to new places.

Terrorism aside, one of the greatest dangers from infectious disease we face today is from a massive outbreak of drug-resistant microbes. Deadly outbreaks recounts the scientific adventures of a special group of intrepid individuals who investigate these outbreaks around the world and figure out how to stop them.




The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers

Yet the panic far outstripped the reality of the situation; Dr. Khan reminds us that the danger of an outbreak—more real than ever in the age of climate change and global travel—is not a matter of which disease is the most deadly or violent. Instead, he urges readers to spread good information and practice essential habits.

Untitled cdc memoir is a vivid and necessary book about rampant and violent diseases, and disasters narrowly averted— and the tools we need to keep them at bay. We charted the movements of Dr. The american Ebola outbreak began and ended with two fatalities. To Dr. During the 2014 ebola crisis, the public watched with rapt attention as a handful of Americans contracted the deadly fever and were transported to treatment facilities in the United States.

Ali khan, the 2014 ebola scare was simply another example of public paranoia about infectious disease; he has been on the front lines of each one — and many we didn't hear about— over the last 25 years. Craig spencer, whose three-mile jog and subway ride to a bowling alley became national news, fearing for our lives.

. Spencer survived, and the disease spread no further. During the 1995 ebola outbreak in zaire, dc, khan found patient zero; he traveled to Washington, in 2001 as a first responder in the anthrax crisis; and went to southeast Asia to treat patients of SARS. The university of nebraska medical center, where khan is now Dean of Public Health, is one of four biohazard containment units in the United States; four Ebola patients were treated there in 2014.




The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

This is science in its most creative, hands-on form, when ingenuity of the mind is the most useful tool in the lab and the rewards of a well-considered experiment are on exquisite display. A dazzling, irresistible collection of the ten most groundbreaking and beautiful experiments in scientific history.

With the attention to detail of a historian and the storytelling ability of a novelist, electricity, New York Times science writer George Johnson celebrates these groundbreaking experiments and re-creates a time when the world seemed filled with mysterious forces and scientists were in awe of light, and the human body.

Here, we see galileo staring down gravity, Newton breaking apart light, and Pavlov studying his now famous dogs.


Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind. From huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.

By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will.

The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean?arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough.

.


Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons

That one bite changed her life forever, pulling her into the abyss of a devastating illness that took ten doctors to diagnose and years to recover: Newby had become one of the 300, 000 Americans who are afflicted with Lyme disease each year. As a science writer, she was driven to understand why this disease is so misunderstood, and its patients so mistreated.

. A riveting thriller reminiscent of the hot zone, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, this true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time—Lyme disease—and of Willy Burgdorfer, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today.

While on vacation on martha’s Vineyard, Kris Newby was bitten by an unseen tick. It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease. A gripping, bitten will shed a terrifying new light on an epidemic that is exacting an incalculable toll on us, infectious page-turner, upending much of what we believe we know about it.

This quest led her to willy burgdorfer, the lyme microbe’s discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War, and believed that the Lyme epidemic was started by a military experiment gone wrong. In a superb, bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, meticulous work of narrative journalism, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy.

.


Earth: An Intimate History

He shows how plate tectonics came to rule the geophysical landscape and how the evidence is written in the hills and in the stones. And in the process, he takes us on a wonderful journey around the globe to visit some of the most fascinating and intriguing spots on the planet. Vesuvius, and ending in a lab in the west of england where mathematical models and lab experiments replace direct observation, whose eruption in Roman times helped spark the science of geology, Richard Fortey tells us what the present says about ancient geologic processes.

In earth, the acclaimed author of trilobite! and Life takes us on a grand tour of the earth’s physical past, showing how the history of plate tectonics is etched in the landscape around us. Beginning with Mt.


Discover Magazine's Vital Signs: True Tales of Medical Mysteries, Obscure Diseases, and Life-Saving Diagnoses

Each tale is true and borders on the unbelievable. Vital signs, each month, ” a popular column featured in Discover Magazine, showcasing, has long been a favorite of readers, fascinating new tales of strange illnesses and diseases that baffle doctors and elude diagnosis. Readers will never look at a “routine check-up” the same again.

Now, physician and “vital signs” editor Robert Norman has compiled the very best of the series into an intriguing and suspenseful collection for fans and new readers alike. These cases and more, representing a wide variety of unique medical anomalies and life-or-death situations, bring readers to the front lines of the medical fray.

Fans of hit medical dramas such as house md will savor the opportunity to read of the real-life cases that puzzled doctors, and the completely unexpected, the gripping detective work that ensued, often life-saving diagnoses. It’s no wonder that throughout the years the column has become an unofficial textbook for medical students, doctors, interns, and anyone interested in human illness and staying healthy.

A young woman carries a baby that wasn’t her own—and wasn’t even a human; Aretha Franklin gives a physician the insight needed to save a life; a modern gynecologist faces an ancient disease. Discover magazine’s vital signs is a glimpse into the exciting work of real medical professionals, told from their perspective, and revealing that anything can happen in medicine.

.


Plague: One Scientist's Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ME/CFS, Autism, and Other Diseases

Mikovits would face the scientific prejudices against CFS, wander into the minefield that is autism, and through it all struggle to maintain her faith in God and the profession to which she had dedicated her life. On july 22, 2009, lymphoma, prostate cancer, a special meeting was held with twenty-four leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health to discuss early findings that a newly discovered retrovirus was linked to chronic fatigue syndrome CFS, and eventually neurodevelopmental disorders in children.

When Dr. Mikovits, this was the midpoint of a five-year journey that would start with the founding of the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease at the University of Nevada, Harvey Whittemore, and end with her as a witness for the federal government against her former employer, a twenty-year veteran of the National Cancer Institute, Reno, for illegal campaign contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

On this journey Dr. Judy mikovits finished her presentation the room was silent for a moment, then one of the scientists said, “Oh my God!” The resulting investigation would be like no other in science. For Dr. This is a story for anybody interested in the peril and promise of science at the very highest levels in our country.

.


On Shaky Ground: America's Earthquake Alert

Nance traces the discoveries of the scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding and predicting one of the deadliest threats known to mankind. Far beneath the earth’s surface, great tectonic plates grind against one another with incredible pressure that must—inevitably—be released. Through riveting firsthand interviews with earthquake survivors, and with the same command of technical detail and gripping style that he brings to his New York Times–bestselling thrillers, Nance demonstrates the need for readiness—because the next big quake could happen tomorrow.

A “gripping” look at the massive disasters that could strike at any moment, from a New York Times–bestselling author San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle. Earthquakes manifest with little warning, shattering infrastructure, upending buildings, and unleashing devastating tsunamis. In this remarkable survey of the history of seismology and the extraordinary seismic events that have occurred in the United States, and other locales, China, Mexico, author John J.

From the pacific northwest to the midwest and the East Coast, most of the United States—not just California—is in danger of a massive quake, and few citizens are adequately prepared.


Conflicts of Interest In Science: How Corporate-Funded Academic Research Can Threaten Public Health

30+ years of peer-reviewed studies on the corporate ties and vested Interests that Influence Scientific ResearchFor over 500 years, groups and organizations with political, economic, and personal interests have successfully exercised influence on the pursuit of scientific inquiry and knowledge. Ultimately, peer reviewers, krimsky’s call to action concerns a collective movement among authors, corporations and journal editors to disclose the sources of their funding.

By holding scientists and the groups that fund them more accountable through increased transparency, we as a society can begin to rebuild trust in the integrity of knowledge. History is replete with examples like the papal authority muddying research into studies of the cosmos, but far less attention is paid today to the various corporate and special interest groups who, through funding and lobbying efforts, have been able to shape the modern academic and scientific landscape to fit their agenda.

In conflicts of interest within science, author Sheldon Krimsky compiles 21 peer-reviewed, academic articles that examine the complex relationship between the individual scientists conducting research and the groups who fund them.


Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude

The incredible, illuminates the various solutions that were proposed and tested, and explores the invention that revolutionized human history and the man behind it, illustrated volume reveals why longitude mattered to seafaring nations, John Harrison. A tale of eighteenth-century invention and competition, and accurate chronicle of the search to solve “the longitude problem, illustrated, commerce and conflict, this is a lively, ” the question of how to determine a ship’s position at sea—and one that changed the history of mankind.

Ships, clocks, and stars brings into focus one of our greatest scientific stories: the search to accurately measure a ship’s position at sea. Here, too, are the voyages of Captain Cook that put these revolutionary navigational methods to the test. Filled with astronomers, ships, inventors, politicians, ships, and stars explores the scientific, Clocks, as well as the sailors, political, and satirists, and commercial battles of the age, seamen, and voyages that made it legend—from Matthew Flinders and George Vancouver to the voyages of the Bounty and the Beagle.

Featuring more than 150 photographs specially commissioned from Britain’s National Maritime Museum, this evocative, detailed, and thoroughly fascinating history brings this age of exploration and enlightenment vividly to life.