Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague

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The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" disease, is only one in a series of mysterious and often fatal afflictions that have baffled scientists for more than 40 years. Deadly Feasts is a compelling account of decades of research into a family of diseases ranging from kuru in primitive human tribes to scrapie in sheep. Richard Rhodes traces the attempts of scientists to understand these strange diseases, which are now known to be transmitted by ingesting the brain or nervous tissue of infected creatures, even though the pathogen itself is an enigma that seems to be neither bacterial nor viral. Deadly Feasts is packed with historical, anthropological, and epidemiological detail, and is graphic and occasionally even alarming in its speculations.

Book Description

In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new Afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest U.S. and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

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In a non-fiction narrative that reads like a medical thriller, Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. A new Afterword assesses what needs to be done to prevent a fatal epidemic. "An Upton Sinclair-ish look inside the modern meat industry....Rhodes tells this medical detective story beautifully". -- John Schwartz, The Washington Post

Customer Reviews:

Engaging look at a scary set of diseases.......2004-08-20

Deadly feasts: tracking the secrets of a terrifying new plague by Richard Rhodes is one scary book. It tracks the discovery of prions, the mishapen proteins responsible for mad cow disease, scrapie, and Creutzfeldt Jacob disease. Following human cannibals in the jungles of New Guinea in the fifties, bovine cannibals of the British Isles in the eighties, and the bizarre history of sheep scrapie from the 17th century on, Rhodes does a great job of presenting the history and discovery of this bizarre group of diseases. I especially enjoyed the characterizations of the scientists, from the Noble Laureate who so enjoyed the New Guinea that he often regretted rejoining civiliziation, yet brought thirty natives back to the USA and helped them through school, to the hyper-competitive scientist who named the molecules even though he wasn't quite certain what they were.

But this isn't just a story of scientific discovery. As the foreboding subtitle blares, Rhodes explores some of the scarier aspects of prions. These include spontaneous formation, responsible for the known early cases of Creutzfeldt Jacob disease, trans-species infection, including mad cow disease and scrapie, the long long incubation period and lack of immune system response, and hardiness of the disease. One scary factoid: a scientist took a sample of scrapie, froze it, baked it for an hour at 360 degrees (celsius), and was able to re-infect other animals from this sample.

For all the uneasiness this book inspires, it certainly doesn't offer any answers. A condemnation of industrial agriculture, a warning that it's unknown whether vegetarians are even safe, and a caution against using bone meal for your flower garden do not make a recipe for handling this issue. To be fair, it was printed in 1997--perhaps things are under control now.

First, Last and Foremost.......2004-02-04

When Richard Rhodes published Deadly Feasts in 1997 it all seemed doubtful and futuristic. His investigations followed the development of this horror from the first, to 1997, and predicted the future (now). Rhodes insisted that if practices weren't changed the US would be plagued by infected cattle. Practices weren't changed, and recently cattle from the US were banned from most of the countries to whom we export. And practices still haven't changed.

If you want to read more about the future I'd suggest you read this book. Despite the passage of years there's not a better source of information about Mad Cow Disease, the protection of the US food supply, regulators bought and paid for by the regulated industry, and what the future holds for all of us.

Do Vegans Worry About Mad Eggplant Disease?.......2004-01-17

When I was an undergrad--way back in the late '70's--we were told that no concrete evidence of cultures that practiced cannibalism existed. This was back when "primitive" societies were depicted as being pure and uncorrupted by modern woes, like MTV and carjackings.

But, in fact, cannibalism has been a thriving tradition among some peoples, and has only recently been wiped out. (Maybe.) And among those who ate nervous system tissue (which would NOT be my first choice, had I been born a cannibal), kuru sometimes reared its ugly head.

Kuru is yet another variation of the encephalopathy that turns the consumer's brain into sponge, which is eventually fatal. Rhodes, always a riveting storyteller, spins the tale of research into kuru, and its parallel prion-based diseases like Mad Cow and scrapie. He also examines the cut-throat academic dispute that led some early researchers (Prusiner) to the Nobel Prize and led others, equally deserving, into oblivion.

Now, Mad Cow is in the news again. It seems we in the U.S. weren't safe, after all! Our meat processing industry has, for years, chosen to ignore warnings that selling "downer" cattle for human consumption is just WRONG. Also, we have been tweaking the diets of many food animals--not just cattle--with brain tissue-based protein, so who knows where it will turn up. We may be reading about Mad Chicken disease in a few years.

It seems that the public is either in complete denial that this is a problem, or else convinced that this is the plague of the 21st Century. I don't think we'll know for another generation, when the effects will have started to appear.

Not only that, but Chronic Wasting Disease, which affects deer and elk, has already infected at least two (that we know of) hunters who ate venison. As much as the media tries to play up the issue, and as much as the "authorities" try to play it down, we do have a problem that won't go away for awhile.

I think that, for those of us who are confirmed carnivores, we really should patronize ranchers who can offer "organic" products. That may also have the effect of increasing the number of smaller agribusinesses.

And we should be informed about this. Rhodes offers a primer on the subject that is as fascinating as it is chilling.

Cuts Through the Baloney.......2004-01-08

The spins and factual errors I was hearing on news reports about "mad cow" in the U.S. sent me back to Rhodes's excellent work for another look. Deadly Feasts is basic to a layman's understanding of the problem.

If more people read this book, we could build a better support base in this country for reforming operations of our food industry, especially how we feed and test animals to be processed for our dinner tables.

If we cheat ourselves of this knowledge, however, we'll be making the same mistake we made in the 1940s and 50s. We ignored scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation from atomic fission, and we sent people out to test sites just to see what might happen to them.

I don't care what the information or precautions or necessary reforms do to "the economy." I don't want my children's and grandchildren's brains wasting away 20 years from now because of the slow but relentless effect of "mad cow."

Excellent documentary but somewhat unprofessional.......2004-01-06

Deadly feasts is an extroardinary, readable, tale anyone interested in public health, medicine, and biology will enjoy reading. The tale is especially relevant now because of the spread of mad cow disease to the United States. I urge people to read this book because it will assist them in understanding the current risks facing the U.S. food supply. I also recommend the book because it is fascinating. Prion diseases are 100% lethal and transmitted in a way that defies conventional wisdom and may not be completely understood to this day.

Mr. Rhodes admirably reports that controversy remains regarding the method of transmission of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. However, I think he goes over the deep end by personally attacking/criticizing the activities of Dr. Pruisner--one of the nobel prize recipients who helped elucidate the "carrier" of prion diseases. If Dr. Prusiner intentionally tried to supress publication of alternative theories, then he has certainly violated good scientific practice. But, as Richard Feynman points out, "nature cannot be fooled," and the truth will eventually emerge regardless of what Dr. Prusiner thinks or does. Mr. Rhodes goes to the point of criticizing Dr. Prusiner for passionately advocating his own theory--maybe at the expense of delaying our arrival at the ultimate truth. We don't know what the ultimate truth is though (Dr. Prusiner may be correct) and science is a market place of ideas that eventually leads to that truth. I think Dr. Prusiner has the right to advocate his own theories, providing he reports his data accurately and fully.

Book Description

A new edition of the most authoritative book in its field, first published in 1999 and edited by the Nobel Prize-winning founder of the field. This edition is expanded and completely updated, and includes chapters on therapeutics, and diagnostic methods and approaches.

Customer Reviews:

(One of the) best book(s) about prions.......2001-01-26

Simply: excellent. The most comprehensive book about prions that I've read up to now. Easy to read, since it contains extremely few mistakes, all of them having to do with the layout, not the contents.

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Prions: The New Biology of Proteins
Claudio Soto
Manufacturer: CRC Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0849314429

Book Description

This volume offers a well-organized overview of prion-related diseases. It reviews the symptoms, epidemiology, and neuropathology of the disease, and focuses on the idea that TSEs result from a novel mechanism involving transmission by replication of the misfolding of a single protein. The author, a renowned innovator in the area of neurodegenerative diseases, examines the structure, conversion, and mechanism of prion propagation and details its cellular biology. He also looks at other diseases that display folding aberrations, considers how common such aberrations are, and speculates on the impact of prions on broader areas of biology, public health, and biotechnological strategies.

Techniques in Prion Research (METHODS AND TOOLS IN BIOSCIENCES AND MEDICINE)

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Techniques in Prion Research (METHODS AND TOOLS IN BIOSCIENCES AND MEDICINE)
Sylvain, Ed. Lehmann
Manufacturer: Springer-Verlag, Inc.
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3764322241

Book Description

Prion diseases, also known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), exist in both humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)) and animals (scrapie, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), chronic wasting disease) and have the unique property of being infectious, sporadic or genetic in origin.

Although the precise nature of the infectious agent responsible for TSEs is not definitely identified, it is now clearly demonstrated that a protein named PrP (for Prion Protein) plays a critical role in the transmission and pathogenesis of TSEs.

This book provides the general description as well as the details of the techniques currently used for the study of prion diseases. Taking into account the pivotal role played by PrP it is not surprising that many Chapters of this book deal with the purification, the detection and the characterization of the different forms of this protein. In addition, in vitro, cellular and animal models specifically adapted to the study of TSEs, as well as bio-safety procedures are described. Each Chapter is written by scientists involved for many years in their respective domain of prion biology who give the best of their knowledge in this technical document. This volume is a very useful tool for any laboratory which recently decided to contribute to the study of TSEs as well as for teams already engaged in this field for many years but interested in extending their technical capacity toward new methods.

Features:

Purification of PrPC and the Pathological Isoform of Prion Protein (PrPsc or PrP-res)

Animal Models of TSEs

Cell Culture Models of TSEs

PrPsc Immunohistochemistry

Western Immunoblotting Techniques

Antibody Production and ELISA

TSE Strain Typing in Mice

Biosafety and Decontamination Procedures

Cell-free Conversion of Prion Proteins

Cytotoxicity of PrP Peptides

Cyclic Amplification of Prion Protein Misfolding

Of interest to:

Researchers and clinicians in the fields of cell biology, biomedicine, neuroscience/neuropathology, veterinary medicine and biochemistry.

How the Cows Turned Mad: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mad Cow Disease

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Well Written, Scary as heck
The molecular biology is astounding
Boring & Dry

How the Cows Turned Mad: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mad Cow Disease
Maxime Schwartz
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0520235312

Book Description

Fear of mad cow disease, a lethal illness transmitted from infected beef to humans, has spread from Europe to the United States and around the world. Originally published to much acclaim in France, this scientific thriller, available in English for the first time and updated with a new chapter on developments in 2001, tells of the hunt for the cause of an enigmatic class of fatal brain infections, of which mad cow disease is the latest incarnation. In gripping, nontechnical prose, Maxime Schwartz details the deadly manifestations of these diseases throughout history, describes the major players and events that led to discoveries about their true nature, and outlines our current state of knowledge. The book concludes by addressing the question we all want answered: should we be afraid?
The story begins in the eighteenth century with the identification of a mysterious illness called scrapie that was killing British sheep. It was not until the 1960s that scientists understood that several animal and human diseases, including scrapie, were identical, and together identified them as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The various guises assumed throughout history by TSE include an illness called kuru in a cannibalistic tribe in Papua New Guinea, an infectious disease that killed a group of children who had been treated for growth hormone deficiencies, and mad cow disease. Revealing the fascinating process of scientific discovery that led to our knowledge of TSE, Schwartz relates pivotal events in the history of biology, including the Pasteurian revolution, the birth of genetics, the emergence of molecular biology, and the latest developments in biotechnology. He also explains the Nobel Prize-winning prion hypothesis, which has rewritten the rules of biological heredity and is a key link between the distinctive diseases of TSE.
Up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly captivating, How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This authoritative book is a stunning case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science.

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Fear of mad cow disease, a lethal illness transmitted from infected beef to humans, has spread from Europe to the United States and around the world. Originally published to much acclaim in France, this scientific thriller, available in English for the first time and updated with a new chapter on developments in 2001, tells of the hunt for the cause of an enigmatic class of fatal brain infections, of which mad cow disease is the latest incarnation. In gripping, nontechnical prose, Maxime Schwartz details the deadly manifestations of these diseases throughout history, describes the major players and events that led to discoveries about their true nature, and outlines our current state of knowledge. The book concludes by addressing the question we all want answered: should we be afraid? The story begins in the eighteenth century with the identification of a mysterious illness called scrapie that was killing British sheep. It was not until the 1960s that scientists understood that several animal and human diseases, including scrapie, were identical, and together identified them as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Revealing the fascinating process of scientific discovery that led to our knowledge of TSE, Schwartz relates pivotal events in the history of biology, including the Pasteurian revolution, the birth of genetics, the emergence of molecular biology, and the latest developments in biotechnology. He also explains the Nobel Prize-winning prion hypothesis, which has rewritten the rules of biological heredity and is a key link between the distinctive diseases of TSE. Up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly captivating, How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This authoritative book is a stunning case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science.

Customer Reviews:

Well Written, Scary as heck.......2006-06-24

An amazing tour of the history of prion diseases. From start to finish, it's well written, beuatifully explained and frighrening. If this book hasn't scared you, read it again

The molecular biology is astounding.......2005-08-07

This is a very complicated matter, with highly specific vocabulary that attempts to describe a variety of forms of a disease which is capable of being distinguished by different incubation periods in the various inbred species of genetically pure or altered mice that have been inoculated with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) in the strains that have been isolated before the French edition of this book went to press near the end of the year 2000. A key word is prion, a protein that might form part of the membrane of a normal cell. Originally in this book, prion was defined by Stanley Prusiner, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1997, in 1982 as the carrier of the infection for TSEs. "Prions are small proteinaceous infectious particles which are resistant to inactivation by most procedures that modify nucleic acids." (p. 100). Forming rods in a polymer structure, ultimately doctors, "when examining brain tissue from kuru patients, had been able to recognize what they called amyloid plaques" (pp. 101-102).

Assuming that any cow in England which showed signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was an indication that the entire herd had been fed contaminated meat and bone meal, (from "forty-six British plants that until 1988 had converted a total of 1.3 million metric tons of meat and bones into animal feed" p. 147), "the total number of cattle affected by the disease from the beginning of the epidemic until the end of 2000 was nearly two hundred thousand in Great Britain," (p. 151). Since the cow form of the disease and the sheep form act differently in mice who are infected, a grand experimental test was performed to see if any sheep have picked up the BSE form:

"In the summer of 2001, rumors began to circulate to the effect that the BSE agent had been found in sheep; the official outcome was to be announced at the end of the year. Europe's health authorities were in a state of red alert. If the results were positive, drastic steps would have to be taken in the sheep-farming sector. Then, just two days before the outcome was made public, there was a dramatic announcement: The researchers had made a mistake. They had mingled samples of sheep brains with samples of cattle brains--and thus there are still no data on the possible transmission of BSE to sheep in natural conditions." (p. 188).

I have noticed that when people try to assign unique numbers to anything, there is always someone who fails to notice that two of those numbers are not the same. I have even worked with a computer that had so few consecutive numbers in a field that it was not able to tell the difference between numbers that had more than the number of digits in the field. There are forty million sheep in Britain, few of which look like cows, even in that night in which all cows are black, but worse than that: the brain samples might look a lot like brain samples from a cow. This experiment was more than double blind if no one kept tract of how samples were mingled.

I love the word epizootic: "Why was an epizootic--an animal epidemic--declared at one particular time, the early 1980s, and only in the United Kingdom?" (p. 189). It must be related to "the death of six white tigers from the Bristol zoo between 1970 and 1977; they died of what was then diagnosed as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, but no one knows what became of the corpses. . . . After all, it isn't often that a cow eats tiger in the way that we eat beef." (p. 190). There are so many things no one knows.

Boring & Dry.......2004-05-20

Maxime Schwartz was a molecular biologist and is now a professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Schwartz traces the history of medical research into spongiform encephalopathies, and how the scientific understanding of how they are spread has changed over time. If you know anything about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow disease, I don't think you'll learn anything new in this book. How the Cows Turned Mad is not a sensational book, nor even a good book. Quite simply it is too wordy and dull.

The Trembling Mountain: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF KURU, CANNIBALS, AND MAD COW DISEASE

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Fascinating
Strange Title - Amazing Adventure
An extraordinary story by a gifted writer
A poorly written, poorly proofread book
Kindred Spirit

The Trembling Mountain: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF KURU, CANNIBALS, AND MAD COW DISEASE
ROBERT KLITZMAN
Manufacturer: Plenum Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 030645792X

Amazon.com

The key word here is personal. Physician Robert Klitzman tells us his life story and humanizes what could easily have been a tabloid-size horror story of Stone Age cannibals and rotten-brained cows. Vivid portraits of the men and women he helped and worked with lift this book above mere sensationalism, showing one people's tragedy in the hopes that others can be averted.

Kuru is a fatal disease formerly epidemic among the Fore people of New Guinea, with symptoms including involuntary laughing, dementia, and loss of motor control. Traced to their ritual cannibalism, it was found to be caused by nonliving crystal-like proteins in the brain. Klitzman traveled to New Guinea before attending medical school to work with these people and quickly learned how little Western medicine could do for the afflicted--he could only make their deaths as comfortable as possible. His despair is palpable.

Fortunately, most Fore have been convinced to give up the most dangerous of their ancestral practices, and the disease has largely abated. But mad cow disease (and others like it), caused by the same class of protein as kuru, remains a threat to Westerners--a threat Klitzman would rather we not face. His very personal story forces us as readers to examine our own lives and our own ancestral practices, perhaps to make some changes ourselves. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating.......2002-04-15

This book tells the story of a young man who travels to Papua New Guinea to try his hand at medical research. The book jackets accurately describes it as "a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story." Just one year out of college, Klitzman sets off to Papua New Guinea alone to work on a project arranged by Carleton Gajdusek to survey the incubation time for kuru. Klitzman soon finds himself living in the Highlands, where he spends his time seeking out former cannibals who are dying of kuru so that he can interview them about when they last ate human flesh.

Klitzman's cultural insights are quite compelling- -instead of finding fault with all that frustrates him, he is able to put the difficulties in context and realize that people are much the same everywhere, underneath their material trappings. One of the fascinating facets of this book is that at the time when Klitzman was doing his research in PNG, kuru was dying out- -the project that he was working on was to find the incubation period for a disease without a future, or so it seemed at the time. When Mad Cow began popping up a few years after Klitzman finished his project, the results suddenly became extremely important for trying to estimate potential deaths due to tainted beef. The book serves as a good reminder that basic research may prove its worth long after the fact.

The book's main narrative takes place in Papua New Guinea in 1983-84, 7 years after independence. It provides interesting historical documentation of living conditions in PNG in the time immediately following independence. In 1997, Klitzman returns to the area where he did his research, and observes how many aspects of life in PNG had deteriorated in the intervening time, despite the quantity of wealth coming into the country. For this reason, area specialists may find much of interest in Klitzman's detailed descriptions of living conditions in the early 1980s in PNG.

Strange Title - Amazing Adventure.......2000-05-25

I had read Dr Klitzman's earlier book "Being Positive" and wanted to read more of his work, the title sounded very strange but bought the book after the life affirming experience of reading the first. Dr Klitzman is one hell of an explorer !, brave, adventurous and a great medical investigator and researcher. The Papua New Guinea Highlands might hold the answers to the questions that medical researchers have been asking for years and Dr Klitzman is a trail blazer to these answers. This story deserves to be read by anyone who is affected directly or indirectly by any disease from cancer to HIV, it will give you a better insight and hope.

An extraordinary story by a gifted writer.......2000-01-30

Written with the intensity of a thriller, THE TREMBLING MOUNTAIN is a brilliant examination of the cultures of the mind. Read it now.

A poorly written, poorly proofread book.......1999-05-31

The subject of cannibalism should grab the attention of the reader. Instead, on page after page, you are startled by grammatical inconsistencies. Nobody has bothered to proofread this book -- not the author, the reader, the editor. The author does not transport you in any way into an exotic world, but instead has you grinding your teeth as you read through such language as "I seen..." This reads like a hasty job, not one that has been put together with love and pride.

Kindred Spirit.......1998-11-09

I wonder if the author has knowledge of a similar book entitled "The Begining was the End" written by Oscar Kiss Maerth published by Sphere Books Ltd in 1974

Advancing Prion Science: Guidance for the National Prion Research Program -- Interim Report

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Advancing Prion Science: Guidance for the National Prion Research Program -- Interim Report
Committee on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies: Assessment of Relevant Science
Manufacturer: National Academies Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Molecular Pathology of the Prions (Methods in Molecular Medicine)

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Molecular Pathology of the Prions (Methods in Molecular Medicine)
Harry F., Ed. Baker
Manufacturer: Humana Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0896039242

Book Description

Internationally recognized investigators review the latest developments in, and novel approaches to, understanding the prion protein and prion diseases at the molecular level. Utilizing a variety of cutting-edge techniques, these distinguished scientists seek to define the normal function of a prion protein, to detect and measure the early immune response to prion disease, and to discover possible therapeutic targets. They also use transgenic mice and new electrophysiological investigations to elucidate the pathogenetic mechanisms involved in prion diseases. State-of-the-art and richly insightful, Molecular Pathology of the Prions captures for basic and clinical neuropathologists the latest developments and approaches to understanding the pathogenesis of prion diseases, and by analogy suggests possible research techniques for the more common proteinopthies, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Prion Diseases (Methods in Molecular Medicine)

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Prion Diseases (Methods in Molecular Medicine)
HARRY F., ED. BAKER
Manufacturer: Humana Press
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Book Description

Leading researchers and clinicians describe their state-of-the-art findings and hypotheses arising from a variety of different approaches to this group of diseases. Their approaches include clinical presentations, epidemiology, transgenic methods, and diagnostic tests via transmission electron microscopy and immunoblotting. The diseases treated range from human to animal spongiform encephalopathies and include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, mad cow disease, and scrapie.

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Prions, once dismissed as an impossibility, have now gained wide recognition as extraordinary agents that cause a number of infectious, genetic and spontaneous disorders.

Prion Diseases of Humans and Animals (Ellis Horwood Books in the Biological Sciences)

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Prion Diseases of Humans and Animals (Ellis Horwood Books in the Biological Sciences)
Stanley Prusiner , John Collinge , and John Powell
Manufacturer: Ellis Horwood Ltd
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