Product Description

Why, Robert S. Desowitz asks, has biotechnical research on malaria produced so little when it had promised so much? An expert in tropical diseases, Desowtiz searches for answers in this provocative book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284960 in Books
• Published on: 1993-06-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .68" h x 5.50" w x 8.20" l, .74 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While biotechnology has taken great strides during the last 25 years, Desowitz, professor of tropical medicine at the University of Hawaii, reports that because of an "inbalance between research and reality," health and health systems--especially in the tropical Third World--have deteriorated. Although this ironically titled book concerns a tragic topic, Desowitz's accounts of unsung heroes in the battle against disease, coupled with his humanity and storyteller's skill, make for engrossing reading--as does, for instance, his speculation that kala-azarper web , like malaria an ancient, insect-borne plague, may have killed the dinosaurs. Malaria, he recalls, was known as Roman fever until Mussolini drained the Pontine marshes. The author asserts that a vaccine against malaria has not been found because of misrepresentation, misuse of funds and outright ineptitude. Soaring costs have further discouraged corporate research, especially for unprofitable drugs that mostly benefit the world's poor. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Desowitz (tropical medicine, Univ. of Hawaii) continues the gripping tales of parasites he began in New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers ( LJ 10/1/81). Focusing on poor tropical nations "where health and health systems have deteriorated during the past twenty-five years," Desowitz describes how visceral leishmaniasis (kala-azar, the black sickness) has returned to the Indian subcontinent after being almost eradicated. He also discusses how malaria, despite years of research, still wreaks havoc in the tropics. Using these two insect-transmitted infections as examples of the tropical world's state of health, Desowitz engagingly narrates "the course of their natural history, human history, and the historical events surrounding their elucidation by sometimes great, sometimes petty, and sometimes venal scientists." For all medical collections.
- James Swanson, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Tropical medicine is outside the mainstream of biomedical research in America. Yet, worldwide, malaria continues to ravage millions, causing between one and two million deaths every year. And malaria at least is a household word. Not so kala azar, Mogul words that mean ``black sickness,'' a parasitic disease of the liver and spleen that causes fever and anemia and commonly proceeds to wasting, dysentery, and death. The record suggests that kala azar was a new disease a century ago--a sort of 19th-century AIDS that hit southeast India in epidemic proportions. It now occurs across China, Russian Turkestan, Mediterranean Europe, North Africa, and the coast of Brazil, with little in the way of treatment except for derivatives of the heavy metal antimony--in short supply and too expensive for the poor. Here, as in his other popular books (The Thorn in the Starfish, 1987, etc.), our tropical medicine man on the scene tells a compelling tale that is half epidemiological sleuthing, half an account of where we stand today. As always, too, there is a mixture of wordplay, compassion, and anger to suit the unfolding of tales that have comic as well as tragic turns and events that reveal heroism but also stupidity and cupidity. In the case of kala azar, we learn that the parasite is leishmania donovani--a protozoan transmitted by the bite of a sandfly. Prevention is plagued by politics as well as by lack of funding and ideas. Desowitz summarizes the details of the better--known malaria story, ending with a sizzling indictment of the Agency for International Development, complete with corrupt officials and venal researchers who pocketed funds awarded for vaccine research. Sad tales, these, that leave the reader with more respect for nature, less for man. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.