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Title details for Deadly Outbreaks: How Medical Detectives Save Lives Threatened by Killer Pandemics, Exotic Viruses, and Drug-Resistant Parasites by Alexandra M. Levitt - Available

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

by Alexandra M. Levitt
ebook
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Despite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors. 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. Part homicide detective, part physician, these medical investigators must view the problem from every angle, exhausting every possible source of contamination. Any data gathered in the field must be stripped of human sorrows and carefully analyzed into hard statistics.
Author Dr. Alexandra Levitt is an expert on emerging diseases and other public health threats. 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, a strange neurologic disease afflicting slaughterhouse workers, flocks of birds dropping dead out of the sky, and drug-resistant malaria running rampant in a refugee camp. Meet the resourceful investigators—doctors, veterinarians, and research scientists—and discover the truth behind these cases and more.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 1, 2013

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781628734546
      • File size: 1658 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781628734546
      • File size: 1657 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2013

      Health scientist Levitt (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC]) is equipped to inform, drafting as she does case studies of microbe outbreaks for a living. In this collection of informative case studies, she describes many outbreaks, from that of salmonella nationwide in 1994 to that of the West Nile virus in New York in 1999. The book features a mix of descriptive writing and fascinating facts. For instance, Legionnaires' disease (LD) is "a disease of modern technology" since the pathogenic group Legionella in natural settings--waterfalls, lakes--does not cause illness. Only when it is concentrated in stagnant, artificially hot waters does it prompt sickness. Startlingly, in 1977, the medical detective who determined LD's cause was told that his find was "an anachronism," as "all significant microbes had already been discovered." The CDC was subsequently underfunded to make way for Richard Nixon's war on cancer, only to be hit with 30 new pathogens causing diseases such as AIDS, SARS, and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. VERDICT Levitt's pace and writing are too workmanlike for a general audience, but this is a compelling read for anyone who's considering a public health career.--Cynthia Fox, Brooklyn

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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