Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA Books
- ISBN13: 9781416557272
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
LURKING in our homes, hospitals, schools, and farms is a terrifying pathogen that is evolving quicker than the medical community can track it or drug developers can make antibiotics to quell it. That pathogen is MRSA—methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus—and Superbug is the first book to tell the tale of its shocking spread and the alarming danger it poses to us all.Doctors long plotting that MRSA was confined to hospitals and clinics, infecting nearly exclusively those who were either already ill or ancient. But through remarkable reporting, including hundreds of interviews with the leading researchers and doctors tracking the deadly bacterium, acclaimed science journalist Maryn McKenna reveals the hidden history of MRSA’s relentless advance—how it has overwhelmed hospitals, assaulted families, and infiltrated agriculture and livestock, tender inexorably into the food chain. Taking readers into the medical centers where frustrated physicians must discard drug after drug as they struggle to keep patients alive, she discloses an explosion of cases that exhibit how MRSA is growing more virulent, even as evolving resistance to antibiotics with surprising speed. It may infect us at any time, no matter how healthy we are; it is carried by a stunning number of our household pets; and it has been detected in food animals from cows to chickens to pigs.
With the sensitivity of a novelist, McKenna describes the emotional and financial devastation endured by MRSA’s victims, acutely describing the many sneaky ways in which the pathogen overtakes the body and the shock and grief of parents whose healthy children were felled by infection in just hours. Through persistent detective work, she discloses the unheard warnings that predicted the current crisis and lays bare the flaws that have allowed MRSA to rage out of control: misplaced government spending, inadequate broadcast health scrutiny, misguided agricultural practices, and vast overuse of the few precious drugs we have left.
Empowering readers with the knowledge they need for self-defense, Superbug sounds an alarm: MRSA has evolved into a global emergency that touches nearly every aspect of modern life. It is, as one deeply concerned researcher tells McKenna, “the largest thing since AIDS.”
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In moments of silent reverie I often find myself wishing I may possibly dance like Astaire, or maybe sing like Sinatra, or perhaps compose like Gershwin. But in truth, I’d happily settle for being able to write about science and medicine as well as does Maryn McKenna.
Even as chock full of scientific in rank, Superbug reads more like a quick-paced medical thriller than a science book. Maryn writes so acutely, that when she takes you into the ICU (which is often), you can all but smell the antiseptic.
Superbug manages to deliver an enormous quantity of scientific data nearly painlessly by incorporating it into the tales of people (and their families) that MRSA has devastated, or those are trying to know and stop its spread.
I can reckon of a fantastic many superlatives to describe this book; engaging, harrowing, fascinating, powerful . . . even terrifying at times.
But the descriptive term that keeps appearance back to me is:
Vital.
There is probably no graver health risk facing the world today than the rise of antibiotic resistant pathogens. And it isn’t just MRSA. There’s VRSA, VRE, VISA, Acinetobacter and others.
The way we use (and misuse) antibiotics in humans, and on the farm, plays a huge role in our ability to deal with infections today and in the future. As Maryn points out, we need to make changes in sickbay procedures, community health care, farming practices, prisons, and antibiotic awareness if we are to combat these emerging superbugs.
Superbug, quite frankly, should be required reading for every doctor, nurse, and health care professional, if for no other reason than to alert them to the changes they must make in order to help curb the spread of these deadly pathogens.
But it should also be on the reading list of parents, students, and teachers who need to be able to recognize the early warning signs of infection.
And just as significantly, read by those who make policy at the local, state, and Federal level. We either make institutional changes or risk serious peril from these resistant bacteria.
This is a book I will keep, and I am certain, will re-read and refer to often. Even if you don’t normally read `science books’, you should take the time to read this one.
Superbug is not only a fascinating book, it’s an vital one.
Rating: 5 / 5
Superbug, by the side of with Beating Back the Devil, cements Maryn McKenna’s status as one of the most readable and enjoyable writers of our time covering infectious disease topics. This book details the broadcast health risk of MRSA through the use of frightening individual experiences, behind-the-scenes research narratives, and well-written explanations of the ever-changing epidemiology of MRSA, all in eloquent yet readable detail.
I judge there is something new in this book for anyone, whether it is read by a physician, investigator, nurse, student, or even the armchair philosopher. I’d absolutely urge the book to anyone working in a clinical science or do that deals with MRSA on a daily basis, or to any students considering careers in the health sciences! After working for 2.5 years side-by-side with Staph researchers in an MRSA lab, I must say I was quite impressed with how absolutely McKenna recounts the unfolding of the MRSA epidemic and updates the reader with current topics in MRSA research and epidemiology. It really place my work and education into context in a few hundred pages, and I have no doubt others will gain from reading this book!
Rating: 5 / 5
Based on my background in biological science, I was very, very excited to get this book, and I was not disappointed.
Maryn McKenna’s new book SUPERBUG, deals with the development of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which is also known as a superbug, it is multiple-drug resistant and impressively deadly. It takes massive amounts of drugs with often serious side-effects to even have a opportunity of beating it.
Historically, MRSA was a disease of hospitals, and only in people that were already suffering from a weakened immune system – but that is no longer the case. A new strain has come up that affects people who have not had any contact with hospitals. It is known as community-bought MRSA, and is surprisingly lethal.
McKenna’s style is appropriately suited to this type of book, as there is a lot of medical jargon that requires a deft hand to clarify to people with small to no knowledge in that particular area. This is accomplished through what I can only describe as a massive quantity of interviews and research with individuals whose lives have been affected by MRSA.
This book raises a lot of issues regarding the sanitary procedures performed at hospitals, the over-prescription of antibiotics in both people and animals, and the sheer speed in which MRSA can adapt.
Reading this book may seem like some sort of scare tactic, and it is. But it is the sort of thing people NEED to hear. McKenna uses people whose lives have been affected by MRSA to tell the tale, and only breaks away from the narrative for context.
Simply place, it is a superbly written science book that reads like a novel.
There are parts of this book which may be trying to read if you are squeamish, specifically where she describes the various symptoms that people infected with MRSA had to deal with. And, not all the people you meet throughout the book survive, as MRSA is an indiscriminate killer.
SUPERBUG is a very impressive book that has some very vital lessons to teach us about microbial evolution, and the huge effect it can have on the human populace.
Rating: 5 / 5