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Cargando... Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know®por Peter C. Doherty
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  KelMunger | Mar 10, 2014 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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"From HIV to H1N1, pandemics pose one of the greatest threats to global health in the twenty-first century. Defined as epidemics of infectious disease across large geographic areas, pandemics can disseminate globally with incredible speed as humans and goods move faster than ever before. While restricted travel, quarantine, vaccines, drugs, and education can reduce the severity of many outbreaks, factors such as global warming, population density, and antibiotic resistance will complicate our ability to fight disease. Respiratory infections like influenza and SARS spread quickly as a consequence of modern, mass air travel, while unsafe health practices promote the spread of viruses like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. In Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Peter Doherty addresses the history of pandemics and the ones that persist today, what promotes global spread, types of pathogens and the level of threat they pose, as well as how to combat outbreaks and mitigate their effects"--Provided by publisher. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Peter C. Doherty (Oxford University Press, $16.95)
It’s that time of year again, when influenza is in the air and thoughts turn to avoiding death’s door. That doesn’t necessarily make this book mandatory reading, but when you’re as interested in death, destruction, plagues and apocalypses as I am, well, why not?
Peter C. Doherty, an immunologist, won a Nobel Prize for his work on viruses and the immune system. In this book—part of Oxford University Press’s “What Everyone Needs to Know” series—Doherty covers the basics of epidemic disease at the level of pandemic, including explaining that a pandemic is different from an epidemic. In a pandemic, the disease spreads quickly and across a wide geographic area (like the flu does); in an epidemic, there’s an outbreak, but it’s usually geographically limited (like a cholera outbreak in one particular region).
Set up as a series of answers to questions, there’s nothing wrong with this: Doherty’s answers are scientific yet readable for the non-scientist, and there are plenty of references for the reader who wants to dive deeper into the material. However, it could benefit—and become much more reader-friendly—through the use of a structure that differentiates between vital information (“What if I become ill while traveling?”), the interesting (“What is snot?”), and the deeply scientific, at least from the perspective of the typical layperson (“What is the difference between RNA and DNA?”).
However, this series in general serves a valuable purpose as both a one-stop shop for those who don’t want to be troubled with becoming experts on everything, as well as a first-stop resource for those who are looking for an overview and guide to further research.
(Published on Lit/Rant on 1/27/2014: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/74716488015/feeling-feverish-pandemics-what-every... (