Deadly Firsts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb traces the spread of several new animal-related diseases, including "mad cow disease" and others that have spread throughout Europe and may soon emerge in the United States. 100,000 first printing. Tour.

This gripping study of ``mad cow disease'' by Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1987, etc.) weaves careful research and powerful stories into a chilling narrative that often reads more like science fiction. Indeed, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle gets credit for prescience at one point: The plot of that novel involves an aberrant form of ice crystal that freezes the oceans and brings about the end of life on earth. For ice crystal, read ``prion,'' the term coined by Stanley Prusiner, a California biochemist/neurologist, to describe a proteinaceous infectious particle that is thought to work by triggering the aberrant folding of a normal brain protein. The end result is fatty deposits in the brain, holes where nerve cells used to be, and, eventually, death. There is no cure. The scary thing about the TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a generic term used to refer to several diseases generating this damage in humans and animals) is that they can be passed within, and sometimes across, species by the consumption of suspect tissues. (Many kinds of animal feed include ground-up animal parts.) Normal chemicals and heat treatment that inactivate DNA do not, for some reason, destroy TSE agents. Rhodes faults the British for being terribly slow to get started slaughtering infected herds and for failing to insure that farmers complied with new regulations for feed preparation. He goes on to assert that there is enough evidence to suggest that Americans may also fall victim to cross-species brain diseases: the animal TSEs exist here, and we are regularly exposed to a variety of products (milk, meat, gelatin) that may carry infection. Rhodes's argument, that suveillance and protection are needed as much as research, is persuasive. A powerful and alarming book. (First serial to Washington Post magazine; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Readers expecting the next The Hot Zone (LJ 8/94) may be disappointed in Rhodes's (Dark Sun, LJ 8/95) latest work. While it contains similar sensationalist elements (there's a gruesome account of a cannibal feast in New Guinea), the narrative lacks the hyperactive, dramatic pacing that made Richard Preston's title a best seller. Instead, Deadly Feasts is a sobering, straightforward if somewhat overly detailed acount of how scientists have tracked the emergence of a new group of fatal brain diseases?transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs)?that affect humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) and animals (mad cow disease). Noting that these diseases are spread via "industrial cannibalism" (e.g., infected animal remains fed to animals, humans eating contaminated meat), Rhodes warns that, unless the government takes action, we could face a new "Black Death" deadlier than Ebola. Plenty of food for thought here. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/97; the publication date was changed from June to coincide with the FDA's considering a proposed ban on feeding processed ruminant animal wastes to cattle.?Ed.]?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal.
-?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

So timely is the subject of Pulitzer Prize^-winning author Rhodes' new book, the publisher pushed its release date up several months. And when you read this chilling chronicle of the spread of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), deadly brain diseases of the mad-cow variety affecting both people and animals, you'll realize that crucial as this exposeis, it is already too late: this is a crisis we will be living with for a long time. Rhodes' dramatic account of three decades of demanding research into the origins of these mysterious, cross-species killer diseases is animated by vivid portraits of the scientists involved, especially the brilliant and eccentric Nobel Prize winner Carleton Gajdusek. His quest began in the late 1950s in New Guinea, where a disease called kuru was eventually linked to the tribe's cannibalism, a connection that, in turn, revealed the cause of mad-cow disease: animal cannibalism, that is, the forced feeding of animal-protein supplements to cattle. Researchers eventually realized that the rendering of dead animals into meat-and-bone meal--which is used not only as animal-protein supplements but also as an ingredient in everything from butter to soap and the bone meal we spread on our gardens--can not only release the deadly infectious protein into our food, including lamb, pork, and chicken, but also can contaminate our blood and organ transplant supplies. Rhodes offers the first popular documentation of a disaster with profound implications, and the sooner the alarming facts are widely known, the better our chances are of combating this insidious plague. Expect heavy media coverage. Donna Seaman