| View Larger Image | The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance | Paperbackby Laurie Garrett (Author)
| List Price: | $20.00 | | Price: | $13.60 | | You Save: | $6.40 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) | | Edition: | Reprintth Edition | | Page Count: | 768 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 01, 1995 | | Sales Rank: | 53,701rd |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780140250916
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A critically acclaimed study documents the outbreaks of newly discovered diseases around the globe, such as HIV, Lassa, and Ebola, and explores the social and environmental deterioration that helps to keep such viruses alive. Reprint. Tour. NYT. |
Amazon.com Review
Where's your next disease coming from? From anywhere in the world--from overflowing sewage in Cairo, from a war zone in Rwanda, from an energy-efficient office building in California, from a pig farm in China or North Carolina. "Preparedness demands understanding," writes Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, and in this precursor to Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, she shows a clear understanding of the patterns lying beneath the new diseases in the headlines (AIDS, Lyme) and the old ones resurgent (tuberculosis, cholera). As the human population explodes, ecologies collapse and simplify, and disease organisms move into the gaps. As globalization continues, diseases can move from one country to another as fast as an airplane can fly. While the human race battles itself ... the advantage moves to the microbes' court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn how to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities. Her picture is not entirely bleak. Epidemics grow when a disease outbreak is amplified--by contaminated water supplies, by shared needles, by recirculated air, by prostitution. And controlling the amplifiers of disease is within our power; it's a matter of money, people, and will. --Mary Ellen Curtin |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 73 reviews)
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A Catalogue of terrorists that we cannot defeat by Herbert L Calhoun (Falls Church, VA USA)  4 Stars
October 15, 2009
Laurie Garrett has broken the code of the death of the human race. While we look outward to the sky for asteroids, comets and plot scenarios to send nuclear weapons out to meet them in deep outer space, and prepare for the "Big Crunch" four billion years away, right in our own biological backyard is a much more proximate, devious and clever enemy that is relentless in its pursuit of bringing humanity to "heel." Germ warfare is not in Saddam Hussein's mobile units, but at our front, back and side doors, and it is gaining as it learns to overcome every defense that we can throw in its path.
Surprisingly the author makes us aware of an important fact that the best ally of this formidable biological enemy is humans themselves. Our habits of poor health and eating habits, unpurified water, unprotected sex, over use of antibiotics, massive immigration, pollution, deforestation all play into the hands of this relentless and aggressive terrorist.
Diseases such as HIV, Lassa, Ebola, etc. are all opportunistic microbes taking what the human traffic will bear and then learning (ever-learning) how to survive in increasingly more hostile and more complex environments. Microbes have a comparative advantage in adaptation, and for that reason alone will outwit humans in the arms race for survival. Their strategy is a "pure" one: surviving by jumping from one species to another and then consolidating its survival in the new environment through the Darwinian principle of mutation combined with specialization.
Here in one volume is "chapter and verse" of how diseases and viruses have come about and how they are constantly gaining ground, as well as what we have done to enable and promote their survival chances at the expense of our own. It is encyclopedic in scope yet readable and sobering, scary, if not down right terrifying.
It is a battle against a terrorist that we cannot win, nor can we even declare a truce, or call for a peace treaty. As John Lee Hooker says, "we won't get out the blues alive." Four stars
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Interesting Non-Fiction by M. Luu (Indiana, USA) 4 Stars
September 19, 2009
This book is incredibly thorough in recounting the "surfacing" of incredibly virulent diseases such as Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola, etc. For a non-scientist, it's quite an eye-opener in terms of the intricate methods researchers have to employ in order to identify and understand a localized epidemic. Once (if) they figure everything out, it goes into stages of prevention and further research.
However, for a scientist, I feel like this book lacks many of the details regarding the cellular mechanisms of the infectious agents (viruses, bacteria, prions, etc.). However, it is a great way to start and eventually search for primary literature regarding each of the presented "probable" epidemics.
All in all, this is a good read for anyone who wants to learn more about the role of epidemiologists or how 'terrible' viruses attack (entire or groups of) populations.
I do wish that there was a more in-depth version that would elaborate on the actual mechanisms that affect the human body. For instance, the mechanisms of viral hemorrhagic fevers and how they lead to such degeneration of the capillaries that they begin to 'leak.'
This book is not meant to scare you, as the title may imply, but rather to inform you of the probable plagues that we face today.
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Great read by Shinzy (TX, USA)  5 Stars
September 17, 2009
I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this book, as I was new to reading non-fiction, but I was most definitely treated by what I found inside!
If you liked Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, you'll love this book. Slightly different writing style, but it still has that in depth feel that follows the backstories of the victims of the many diseases it lists- including the stories of the 'patient zeros' which I never fail to find utterly fascinating.
This book is easy for a lay-person to understand and get into, and not only documents detailed histories of the viruses, parasites, bacteria, etc it lists, but also the tales and interactions of the many scientists and doctors who worked with them in labs and during the outbreaks that occurred in the field to find the cause and possible cures. Add in the drama and scandals that occur in both the foreground and background of political and scientific fields during the middle of outbreaks of deadly organisms, and you have an excellent find.
Donate the thriller and suspense fiction to the local library and pick this book up instead- it is WELL worth it!
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The coming plague brougth by your local doctor... by Christine Richardson (USA) 5 Stars
July 07, 2009
Will it be swine flu? Was that a test run? This is one of the best books to blow the lid off the medical profession and how they have created one of the biggest medical horror-shows in history - the coming super plague - and it will be like nothing seen before. Read this book before its too later.
A great book by a great man! A hero!
Three other books that are just as important now, before universal vaccination creates the plague it claims will prevent:
Vaccination Horror: An anthology of important works on vaccination pseudoscience
The Vaccination Myth: Courageous MD exposes the Vaccination Fraud!
The Poisoned Needle: Suppressed Facts about Vaccination
Be informed!
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Its about to happen! by Marie Martin 5 Stars
June 05, 2009
Who has created this mess? Its about to happen, swine flu may not be the big one, but there is a big one coming as this book clearly shows! This book needs to be read but all concerned persons!
And to help protect yourself, read its twin:
The Poisoned Needle: Suppressed Facts about Vaccination
It will show you how it started and what you must NOT do to stay safe!
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