BIOG 162: Resources about Infectious Diseases

Filled with highly instructional visual images, An Atlas of the Clinical Microbiology of Infectious Diseases, Volume 1: Bacterial Agents contains typical and atypical presentations and identifying characteristics of microorganisms, including newly described microbial agents, covering the breadth of clinical microbiology.

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States, with more than 300,000 cases diagnosed each year. However, doctors are deeply divided on how to diagnose and treat it, giving rise to the controversy known as the "Lyme Wars." In this authoritative book, the Columbia University Medical Center physicians Brian A. Fallon and Jennifer Sotsky explain that, despite the vexing "Lyme Wars,"there is cause for both doctors and patients to be optimistic." They clearly explain the immunologic, infectious, and neurologic basis of chronic symptoms, the cognitive and psychological impact of the disease, as well as current and emerging diagnostic tests, treatments, and prevention strategies.

Every new development--from exploding human and animal populations to trade and travel--intensifies our susceptibility to a devastating epidemic. Ironically, a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 flu that killed perhaps a hundred million people would be deadlier today, despite a century of medical advances. As the current Zika epidemic proves, we are wholly unprepared for these diseases. So what can-and must--we do to protect ourselves against mankind's Deadliest Enemy?

From the Athenian flu pandemic to the Black Death to AIDS, this extensive two-volume set offers a sociocultural, historical, and medical look at infectious diseases and their place in human history from Neolithic times to the present. Nearly 300 entries cover individual diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, Ebola, and SARS); major epidemics (such as the Black Death, 16th-century syphilis, cholera in the nineteenth century, and the Spanish Flu of 1918-19); environmental factors (such as ecology, travel, poverty, wealth, slavery, and war); and historical and cultural effects of disease (such as the relationship of Romanticism to Tuberculosis, the closing of London theaters during plague epidemics, and the effect of venereal disease on social reform).

At the turn of the twentieth century, smallpox claimed the lives of two million people per year. By 1979, the disease had been eradicated and victory was declared across the globe. Yet the story of smallpox remains the exception, as today a host of deadly contagions, from polio to AIDS, continue to threaten human health around the world. Spanning three centuries,The End of Plagues weaves together the discovery of vaccination, the birth and growth of immunology, and the fight to eradicate the world's most feared diseases. From Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination in 1796, to the early nineteenth-century foundling voyages in which chains of orphans, vaccinated one by one, were sent to colonies around the globe, to the development of polio vaccines and the stockpiling of smallpox as a biological weapon in the Cold War, world-renown immunologist John Rhodes charts our fight against these plagues, and shows how vaccinations gave humanity the upper hand. Today, aid groups including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization have made the eradication of polio a priority, and Rhodes takes us behind the scenes to witness how soon we may be celebrating the eradication of polio.

This book is a guide to information on infectious diseases that have either lately appeared for the first time in a population or have recently rapidly increased in incidence such as Ebola, Lassa Fever, MERS, Rift Valley Fever, and Zika virus. The articles avoid medical jargon and use language that laypersons can understand while still providing authoritative, balanced information that addresses the pathogens that are causing and threaten to cause significant health crises.

Infectious Diseases in Context is a comprehensive guide to the increasingly important topic of emerging and infectious diseases and covers the history, politics, and ethical debate related to infectious diseases. The set includes articles on how such diseases impact trade and commerce, travel and the future of industrialized and impoverished nations.

This book is a response to current confusion and misunderstanding of microbes amongst the general public; written in narrative form, it will allow readers to better understand the scientific concepts and terminology of how microbial or viral diseases are caused, to ask intelligent questions about the impact of such diseases on our well being, and to comprehend reports about disease outbreaks that flood the media. Following several introductory chapters that introduce the microbe, its history, and the necessary fundamental chemical and biological concepts, the heart of the book describes in great detail six critical microbial and viral diseases that plague our world and how each of them illustrates the basic characteristics of infection. Each of these six diseases follows the same path - invasion, internal spread, toxin effects, and excretion - and an understanding of the pathogenicity of each will provide readers with a better understanding of the fascinating scientific relationship between man and virus, human and microbe, and how to live with or defeat them.

An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases,and the panic and corruption that make them worseThroughout history, humankind's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million deaths. We ignore this reality most of the time, but when a new threat,Ebola, SARS, Zika,seems imminent, we send our best and bravest doctors to contain it. People like Dr. Ali S. Khan.In his long career as a public health first responder- protected by a thin mask from infected patients, napping under nets to keep out scorpions, making life-and-death decisions on limited, suspect information- Khan has found that rogue microbes will always be a problem, but outbreaks are often caused by people. We make mistakes, politicize emergencies, and, too often, fail to imagine the consequences of our actions. The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others,and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.

The search for a "patient zero"--popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic--has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas--and fears--about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed--and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero--adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings--as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.

How pathogenic microorganisms have shaped human civilization

The latest, most essential pathology knowledge in a readable, interesting manner, ensuring optimal understanding of the latest basic science and clinical content. High-quality photographs and full-color illustrations highlight new information in molecular biology, disease classifications, new drugs and drug therapies, and much more.

This innovative 7-vol. set offers an exceptional, interdisciplinary approach to learning by integrating two important subjects: science and history. The volumes are chronologically ordered from 2000 B.C. to the present, addressing a wide variety of scientific developments with explanations of underlying factors and their effects on politics, economics, culture and daily life. The entries -- more than 20 topical essays, 25 full biographies and 85 sketches of notable people in each volume -- move forward through history, describing notable scientific discoveries and achievements along with their social and historical impact.

VACCINES: What Everyone Needs to Know offers a scientifically grounded overview of the science, manufacture, and culture of vaccines in the United States and internationally. Aiming to offer an unbiased resource on this hotly debated subject, it provides accessible, authoritative overviews of the following:* How vaccines work* The history of vaccines* Vaccine policy - who writes it, and does it matter?* The contents and manufacture of vaccines* Vaccine injury* The alleged link between vaccines and autism* Vaccines and new outbreaks

In The Viral Network, Theresa MacPhail examines our collective fascination with and fear of viruses through the lens of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. MacPhail follows the H1N1 influenza virus's trajectory through time and space in order to construct a three-dimensional picture of what happens when global public health comes down with a case of the flu.The Viral Network affords a rare look inside the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, as well as Hong Kong's virology labs and Centre for Health Protection, during a pandemic. MacPhail looks at the day-to-day practices of virologists and epidemiologists to ask questions about the production of scientific knowledge, the construction of expertise, disease narratives, and the different "cultures" of public health in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, and China. The chapters of the book move from the micro to the macro, from Hong Kong to Atlanta, from the lab to the WHO, from the pandemic past in 1918 to the future. The various historical, scientific, and cultural narratives about flu recounted in this book show how biological genes and cultural memes become interwoven in the stories we tell during a pandemic. Ultimately, MacPhail argues that the institution of global public health is as viral as the viruses it tracks, studies, and helps to contain or eradicate. The "global" is itself viral in nature.

From one of the country's foremost doctors comes a ground-breaking book about diagnosing, treating and healing Lyme, and peeling away the layers that lead to chronic disease. In a field where the number of cases is growing exponentially around the world and answers remain elusive, Dr. Horowitz has treated over 12,000 patients and made extraordinary progress. His plan represents a crucial paradigm shift, without which the suffering will continue. In this book, Dr. Horowitz: - Breaks new ground with a 16 Point Differential Diagnostic Map, the basis for his revolutionary Lyme treatment plan, and an overarching approach to treating all chronic illness. - Introduces MSIDS, or Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome, a new lens on chronic illness that may prove to be an important missing link. - Covers in detail Lyme's leading symptoms and co-infections, including immune dysfunction, sleep disorders, chronic pain and neurodegenerative disorders - pro­viding a unique functional and integrative health care model, based on the most up-to-date scientific research, for physicians and health care providers to effectively treat Lyme and other chronic illnesses.