The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Mutant Germs Threatens Us All

In their book, THE NEW KILLER DISEASES: Why SARS, West Nile Virus, Ebola, and Mad Cow Disease are only the Beginning, authors, Elinor Levy & Mark Fischetti, Ph.D., tell us how several of the old-time diseases, like tuberculosis and plague, are making a come back; while at the same time newly emerging diseases like West Nile Virus and SARS are becoming more common. We see them on television. We hear about them on the radio. We read about them in the newspapers. Deadly micobes are everywhere. We're told they're undermining our health, sapping our economy, and overtaxing the global healthcare system. Why is all this happening? The number one reason killer diseases are on the rampage is because they've become resistant to modern-day antibiotics. That's right. The germs have finally gotten smarter than the humans, and the experts tell us that a lot of the blame falls directly onto our doctors. Sorry guys, but it's true. Evidently, you've been prescribing unnecessary antibiotics to your patients for a long time now, and, subsequently, the germs you were trying to kill, have mutated into drug-resistant germs. Bad news! Over the years the pesky little bugs have grown even stronger, so now we're in serious trouble. We get sick - we can't get well. That's not even funny. So here we are, surrounded by an army of deadly microbes, yet everybody just seems to going about their business as usual. What's up with that? A few days ago I was talking about this very subject with some guy I met in the mall. His feeling was that when your number's up, it's up. Don't worry about it. I was flabberghasted. So why aren't we more concerned? The simplest answer is that Americans are basically a ho-hum society. If the threat isn't immediate - then mañana. But if you think a drug resistant disease can't happen to you, you're wrong. I have a friend who picked up a serious staphylococcus infection through casual contact at his local gym. He had a small cut on his arm and forgot to place a towel between his bare arm and the gym equipment. Within a few days his entire arm had turned black and blue and swelled to twice its normal size. It looked dead, and would have been if he hadn't of gotten prompt medical treatment. Even then, the first antibiotic didn't do the job. Needless to say, it wasn't a very pleasant experience. That is not a unique story. Deadly germs are everywhere, and we need to do something proactive to meet this threat---now! The authors suggest the following strategy: "Tighter surveillance, more research, better tests, expanded public health programs and greater education." There's no doubt that such a strategy would be expensive, but the bottom line is that this whole drug resistant disease thing has gotten totally out of control, and if we don't do something about it soon, then our ambivalence will surely deliver us all to the Promised Land. It's time we became more aware, and this book should absolutely be on your required reading list.

I could not put this book down and found the information extremely valuable and frightening! Forget reading a Stephen King novel, pick up this book and you will be horrified at the number of killer viruses, bacteria, and even prions (the substance responsible for Mad Cow Disease.) The authors have done an excellent job of showing the path of the newest killer diseases! A prolific book on the subject of newly emerging diseases!

This is not the sort of information that one should talk about at the next wedding reception; especially if there stands a food buffet complete with salad bar --- salad bars are the 'Typhoid Mary's' of our modern, super-infectious times.Authors Elinor Levy and Mark Fischetti talk intelligently about 'super-spreaders."...No - not merely persons possessing big booties, but instead, people infected with nasty germs and viruses that pass it on to an inordinate number of unsuspecting saps. One day a person boards a bus, and by the next morning, they find themselves in isolation for treatment of SARS. Nurses and Doctors also become sickened by these 'superspreaders' and pretty soon, the World Health Organization declares an epidemic of one type of pneumonia that is tough to treat.Well, the discussions about SARS,E Coli 0157, AIDS, Hepatitis C and over usage of antibiotics rage on throughout the 292 page labor of medical research.Once again, the message to bring home is to WASH YOUR HANDS!For God's sakes! Get up from this computer and knock those germie germs off su manos immediamente! Caramba!On page 117 -- Chapter 4 -- Here come the PRIONS...oooh --- they're scary little non-living things...an entirely new class of pathogen that for years, scientists scoffed that they even existed. But PRIONS is what caused Mad Cow Disease in Britian, or the other fatal disease in humans referred to as Cueutzfeldt-Jakob disease. THe brain literally is eaten up by these cells that act wildly. Imagine a normal neuron is like a fold-up chair, and your brain is like a huge auditorium filled neatly with folding chairs lined up nice,orderly and neatly in rows. only Prions trigger your folding chairs to suddenly fold up wildly, like a metal folding chair that was hit by a car. Prions make your chairs mangled by their influence. Once the prions get a hold of your neurons, it passes on messages and in no time at all, your brain is a messed-up avalanche of a tangled mess of metal folding chairs, as if an 18 wheeler truck mistakenly drove through.PRIONS our our newest microscopic foe, and doctors don't know how to kill them without also killing the victim.The victim gets the prion infestation by eating infected meat, and for all we know, those cows in Britian had an outbreak and the heards were slaughtered in order to prevent them from infecting other cattle world-wide.Sure hope it worked.After scaring the bee-jezus outta the reader, the book finally winds down to what we can do about germ warfare, overuse of antibiotics and development of probiotics and other potential weapons against microbes that mutate and reconform their outer membranes to keep fooling man kind from killing them.Hey - it's gonna be us or them.....somebody please pass the Ciprofloxacin!

In this disturbing new book, authors Mark Fischetti and Dr. Elinor Levy look at the recent trends in the evolution of germs and demonstrate the threat that they represent to all of humanity. Beginning with the recent advent of SARS, the book examines a plethora of naturally occurring pathogens, and how they have changed since the post-World War 2 years, when antibiotics seemed to represent the ultimate victory of man over disease. Increasingly, doctors have found that familiar (and treatable) pathogens are returning in new forms that are more deadly than those seen before, and are increasingly immune to existing medical treatment.This is not a book for the complacent. In this book, the authors are sounding an alarm at recent trends, and are recommending quick action in the war between humans and germs. The book is crammed full of stories of the effects of the newer generations of diseases, and will shock and disturb anyone who doesn't take them seriously.But, the book is not primarily sensationalistic, but instead treats the topic as a serious subject that must be explained to the lay reader. Indeed, at times the authors are quite optimistic, informing the reader of new and developing fields of immunology that promise whole new fronts being opened up in the war against germs. So, if you are interested in the present trends in medicine and diseases, then I would highly recommend this book to you. Indeed, if you have heard tales of SARS and Mad Cow Disease, and want to know what's going on, then you must get this book!

I had no idea we were each under such serious threat from infectious diseases until I read this book. I ignored how vulnerable we all are. The book details the rise of infectious diseases in the past 25 years - 30 new ones in that short time. The new killers are all here: SARS, West Nile, Mad Cow, flesh-eating bacteria, hepatitis C, HIV, plus possibilities of bioterrorism, and more. Detailed stories of many of the victims are riveting; some died, some survive. I couldn't stop reading accounts of these people, what they endured, and the course of their illness. I learned how to recognize symptoms of the diseases, how these illnesses operate in our bodies, and how our immune systems, and drugs, try to battle them. The book reveals how we have made things worse, but explains what scientists and politicians can do to protect us. Now I'm aware, and I know what to look out for to try to protect myself.It's well worth reading.