The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery
The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery Books
Product Description
For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is near obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, even as in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.
What these weird conditions–including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease–share is their cause: prions. Prions are run of the mill proteins that sometimes go incorrect, resulting in neurological illnesses that are everlastingly fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are nearly impossible to ruin because they are not alive and have no DNA–and the diseases they result in are now spreading nearly the world.
In The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding tale of the prion’s hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max clarifies this tale’s connection to human greed and ambition–from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead near wiped them out. The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinary–for example, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described
“pedagogic pedophiliac pediatrician” who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study.
With remarkable precision, grace, and sympathy, Max–who himself suffers from an inherited neurological illness–explores maladies that have tormented humanity for centuries and gives reason to hope that someday cures will be found. And he pathetically demonstrates that in our relationship to nature and these ailments, we have been our own most terrible enemy.
Advance praise
“The Family that Couldn’t Sleep is a riveting detective tale that plumbs one of the deepest mysteries of biology. The tale takes the reader from the torments of an Italian family cursed with sleeplessness to the mad cows of England (and, now, America), following an unlikely trail of misfolded proteins. D. T. Max unfolds his absorbing narrative with rare grace and makes the science sing.” –Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire
“Much has been written about prions and Mad Cow Disease–near all of it is worthless. Thankfully, from the world of journalism comes D.T. Max to set things aptly. Throw all those other “Mad Cow” books in the trash: This is the book to read about prions–or whatever you want to call them. It’s a riveting tale, told by someone with a very unique understanding, derived in part from his own weird ailment. Find a cozy spot, clear your schedule and dive in.”
– Laurie Garrett, author of Betrayal of Trust and The Appearance Plague
“D. T. Max skillfully unfolds the mysterious prion in all its villainous guises. Although scientists do not fully know these proteins–how they imitate and wreak such havoc in their victims’ brains–The Family That Couldn’t Sleep reveals their historical, cultural, and scientific place in our world. Prepare to be enlightened, entertained, and frightened.”
–Katrina Firlik, MD, author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe
“A fantastic book. D.T. Max has drawn the curtain on a cabinet of folly and malady that will stagger your thoughts.”
– Philip Weiss, author of American Taboo
“D.T. Max has combined the enthralling medical anthropology of Oliver Sacks with the gothic horror of Stephen King to yield a medical detective tale that is as intelligent as it is spooky. The baddie of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep is the prion, a tiny small protein that causes some of the most terrifying, brain-mangling, creepy diseases known to man. Everlastingly fascinating–how may possibly it not be, given that its characters include cannibals, mad cows, madder sheep, a Nobel prize-winning pedophile, and, most poignantly, an Italian family cursed by fatal insomnia?–Max’s book is also a gripping account of scientific discovery, and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to be cursed with an incurable, and brutal, illness.” – David Plotz, author of The Genius Factory
From the Hardcover edition.
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must be for just being such a written fascinating book. some of the disease correlated book are dull. but this one is certainly not! Mr max, for your shape up, in japan they have invented a plastic (i saw that on TV from a program called best 3 ) which they made a gidget into a gear which with minimum force you can lift a a lot of things. remember the gear logan in “dark angel” have? the same stuff.
Rating: 5 / 5
As reviews indicated, this is a medical mystery detective book. Well written, fascinating, and deeply disturbing. Underneath the tales, though, is a strong call for action in the area of prion research. Prions are a third disease vector, besides bacteria and viruses. They’re simple small strips of protein that can cause other proteins in the brain to act improperly. From this we get mad cow disease as well as others. I suppose the author had his reasons to hide his main theme, which you’d never guess from the title. If he’d entitled it “The Family that may possibly Sleep: the Unconquerable Prions” or something like that, I reckon I would’ve rated it a 5. I painstakingly loved the book and came away feeling I now know something that was everlastingly a vague mystery to me before. I urge it as serious reading.
Rating: 4 / 5
FASCINATING, A GREAT READ. I LOVE NONFICTION BOOKS AND I LOVE TO LEARN ABOUT NEW THINGS AND THIS WAS A PERFECT READ. A GREAT MEDICAL MYSTERY AND I HOPE HE GETS TO RIGHT A SEQUEL IF NEW DISCOVERIES ARE EVER MADE
Rating: 5 / 5
I just finished reading this book and HIGHLY urge it. Even as it is non-fiction, it reads as excellent as any fictional thriller I have read. It provides incredible insight, not only into this suffering family, but also into the fascinating world of Prions and thier associated diseases. Mr. Max’s writing style lends itself well to this tale and to the science behind it. For anyone who likes a medical mystery, this is a MUST READ book!
Rating: 5 / 5
What a gift to find a non-fiction book on a topic you painstakingly delight in (medicine/prions) that unravels with all the allure and drama of a novel. Very well done. If all the facts are right it’s infuriating on numerous levels and spooky, too. My best supporter’s doctor, from the U.S., died of Mad Cow Disease. I can only hope it was a fluke.
Rating: 5 / 5