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Amazon.co.uk Review
Fans of The Hot Zone will find Deadly Feasts irresistible. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a gripping account of a disease and its discovery. If you thought the Ebola virus was bad news, check out transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). Always fatal, they can lurk in a body for years before emerging to claim their victims by turning their brains to slush. At least Ebola sickens quickly and occasionally spares a life. Rhodes exaggerates when he calls this a "new plague" in his subtitle, but TSEs are to blame for the real-world disaster of mad cow disease in Britain. And they do pose a genuine threat to human life.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
Thanks for your reviews--and a few corrections.
Glad to see an ongoing debate on the issues I report in my book. "dseamon" (03/27/97) misreads my statement, though: the 700,000 BSE-infected cattle entered the human food supply over ten years, not annualy, so 2 percent is accurate. "YYYguise's" (04/11/97) review is deliberately misleading, borrowed in part from a review in the conservative rag "The Weekly Standard" (the ad hominem attack on my supposed preoccupation with cannibalism). It's true I didn't talk to USDA scientists (why would I want to do that? their activities and their views have been widely published). I interviewed all the leading specialists in the field of TSE studies with the exception of Stanley Prusiner, who chose not to talk to me--as Oliver Sacks authoritatively confirms in his recent enthusiastic New Yorker review. I also spoke with scientists at the FDA. It's not hype that Mad Cow disease is transmissible to humans: that's what British and French scientists have concluded about the 17 human deaths they've identified so far from a new form of CJD.
Glad to see an ongoing debate on the issues I report in my book. "dseamon" (03/27/97) misreads my statement, though: the 700,000 BSE-infected cattle entered the human food supply over ten years, not annualy, so 2 percent is accurate. "YYYguise's" (04/11/97) review is deliberately misleading, borrowed in part from a review in the conservative rag "The Weekly Standard" (the ad hominem attack on my supposed preoccupation with cannibalism). It's true I didn't talk to USDA scientists (why would I want to do that? their activities and their views have been widely published). I interviewed all the leading specialists in the field of TSE studies with the exception of Stanley Prusiner, who chose not to talk to me--as Oliver Sacks authoritatively confirms in his recent enthusiastic New Yorker review. I also spoke with scientists at the FDA. It's not hype that Mad Cow disease is transmissible to humans: that's what British and French scientists have concluded about the 17 human deaths they've identified so far from a new form of CJD.
But I'm glad some reviewers noticed that the book is a medical detective story, filled with interesting characters. Carleton Gajdusek is preeminent among them. I would certainly defend the quality of his science. His admission of guilt on two charges of child molestation for sexual activity with two teenaged boys is indefensible, and I don't "defend" him in this matter, but I do report it. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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