Product Description

In June 1999, a 33-year-old woman walked into a San Francisco hospital complaining of acute pain in her legs. The day before, she had what she thought was a flu: fever, dizziness and abdominal pain. Within two hours of her admission to hospital, she was dead, and unrecognisable. The diagnosis: flesh-eating bacteria. Bacteria are one of the most basic life forms on earth, yet they pose a threat to mankind that not even the most sophisticated scientific techniques can contain. This book describes the full horror of our most primitive but potentially most deadly enemy - and man's attempts to stop it. The book charts the competition between the drug companies to develop a new super-antibiotic, and the race to save lives and make millions. It also describes the surprising return of a technique that predates penicillin - the development of a phage or virus that kills the bacteria from within. From the political wrangling to the personal anecdotes of doctors at the frontline, the book brings to life the story of a killer that is turning every hospital into a hot zone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1028894 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Review
'Absorbing, compelling - and terrifying. You need to read - and share - this book.' - Jane Goodall

About the Author
Michael Shnayerson is a contributing editor to VANITY FAIR. Mark Plotkin is a botanist who has done extensive groundbreaking research on healing plants and the new approaches to combating bacterial infections.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book. Every one should read it.
This book describes the problem of the bacteria developing resistance to the many antibiotics that humans are using to fight them and, the most important, that we are losing this battle. The book talks about the reasons behind this : overuse and abuse of antibiotics by us, use of antobiotics as "growth enhancers" and so on. I am already aware of this resistance problem but after reading this book I was thrilled and frightened. If we do not change our ways of using antibiotics soon then we will soon be unable to fight those drug resistant bacteria when they cause infections and a huge health problem will unfold. I for one strongly agree with the authors that antibiotics use as "growth enhancers" should be totally banned as soon as possible.

For me to know, and you to read about, now!
How could we all be at the fore-front of a war and not know about it? Because it's one of those issues that people undermine and officials try to keep hush so panic does not strike out. Well, I'm asking you to start panicking now. The primary reason that humans are gradually being killed off one-by-one by bacteria with no-one noticing is because we like to reproduce a lot and frequently. However, not as much as some it would seem; bacteria replicate millions of themselves around every 6 hours and with every generation is likely to be an improved characteristic that takes it another step forward towards developing resistance against one more of our drugs. (There already exists bacteria resistant to our most virulent antibiotic, vancomycin). Now it doesn't take great mathematical ability to realise that the odds are against us, what chance have we against the evolution of a micro-organism which is believed to have survived even the ice age? I like to think of it as nature's way of punishing us for being disrespectful (whilst more and more of us are being sentenced to the death penalty). Now only time will tell if we live to actually see global warming make our world inhabitable.
[Executive Director of the World Health Organisation himself says: "If a public health crisis of major proportions is to be averted, books such as this one need to be read by consumers as well as the authorities"] God knows we're on the verge of death, do you?