Showing results by publisher "Audible studios" in Contagious Diseases

From a case of hysterical paralysis to a pregnancy puncturing a lung, twenty-five of the most thrilling medical mysteries known to man (and doctor)."Vital Signs," a popular column featured in Discover Magazine, has long been a favorite of readers, showcasing, each month, fascinating new tales of strange illnesses and diseases that baffle doctors and elude diagnosis. Each tale is true and borders on the unbelievable. It's no wonder that throughout the years the column has become an unofficial textbook for medical students, interns, doctors, and anyone interested in human illness and staying healthy.

Despite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors. Vaccines and antibiotics, the mainstays of modern medicine, have not been able to conquer infectious microbes because of their amazing ability to adapt, evolve, and spread to new places. Terrorism aside, one of the greatest dangers from infectious disease we face today is from a massive outbreak of drug-resistant microbes.

Auf einer Reise nach Sierra Leone lernt Bestsellerautor John Green den jungen Henry kennen, der mit Tuberkulose im Krankenhaus liegt. Seine bewegende Krankheitsgeschichte nimmt er zum Anlass, der ältesten und tödlichsten Infektionskrankheit der Welt auf den Grund zu gehen. Er will sich nicht damit abfinden, dass jährlich 1,5 Millionen Menschen sterben, obwohl es seit langem wirksame Medikamente gegen Tuberkulose gibt. John Green fordert Lösungen für diese globale Gesundheitskrise: weltweiten Zugang zu lebensrettender Behandlung, erschwinglichere Medikamente, Aufmerksamkeit und Engagement.

Richard Prestons populärwissenschaftlicher Tatsachen-Thriller liest sich spannender als jeder Horror-Roman. Preston berichtet darin über die ersten Infektionen mit dem Ebola-Virus vor über vierzig Jahren. Sein Tatsachenthriller von 1998 ist immer noch hochaktuell, wie die schreckliche Ebola-Epidemie in Zentralafrika gerade zeigt. Ebola gehört zu den gefährlichsten Killerviren.

Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed - refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples - causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.

The hunt for the origin of the AIDS virus began over 20 years ago. It was a journey that went around the world and involved painstaking research to unravel how, when, and where the virus first infected humans. Dorothy H. Crawford traces the story back to the remote rain forests of Africa - home to the primates that carry the ancestral virus - and reveals how HIV-1 first jumped from chimpanzees to humans in rural southeast Cameroon. Examining how this happened, and how it then travelled back to Colonial west central Africa where it eventually exploded as a pandemic, she asks why and how it was able to spread so widely.

National polls show that Americans are increasingly concerned about vaccine safety and the right to make individual, informed choices together with their healthcare practitioners. Vaccine Epidemic focuses on the searing debate surrounding individual and parental vaccination choice in the United States. Featuring more than 20 experts from the fields of ethics, law, science, medicine, business, and history, Vaccine Epidemic urgently calls for reform.

When Peter Piot was in medical school, a professor warned, "There’s no future in infectious diseases. They’ve all been solved." Fortunately, Piot ignored him, and the result has been an exceptional, adventure-filled career. In the 1970s, as a young man, Piot was sent to Central Africa as part of a team tasked with identifying a grisly new virus. Crossing into the quarantine zone on the most dangerous missions, he studied local customs to determine how this disease - the Ebola virus - was spreading. Later, Piot found himself in the field again when another mysterious epidemic broke out: AIDS.

A fascinating look at a bizarre, forgotten epidemic from the national best-selling author of The American Plague. In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it arrived.

Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from malaria. No one's quite sure of the exact number. It's just too difficult to keep track of the disease as it tears through more than 200 million cases each year, many of them in countries wracked by war and blighted by other problems. In The Deadly Air, Christian Jennings mixes together his own experiences of suffering from malaria with a history of mankind's struggle with the disease.

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?

History books abound with accounts of large scale destruction wrought by infectious disease. As recently as 1918, a pandemic of influenza claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. The advent of drugs and vaccines led to an era of hope when we thought our battles with infectious disease were won, but our optimism has been eroded by the recognition that many pathogens have the capacity to transform themselves and escape our efforts to eradicate them. Are we now facing an inevitable repeat of a calamity such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the Black Death?

The average individual is far more likely to die in a car accident than from a communicable disease...yet we are still much more fearful of the epidemic. Even at our most level-headed, the thought of an epidemic can inspire terror. As Philip Alcabes persuasively argues in Dread, our anxieties about epidemics are created not so much by the germ or microbe in question - or the actual risks of contagion - but by the unknown, the undesirable, and the misunderstood.

In The End of Epidemics, leading public health authority Dr Jonathan D. Quick tells the stories of the heroes, past and present, who’ve succeeded in their fights to stop the spread of illness and death. He explains the science and the politics of combating epidemics. And he provides a detailed seven-part plan showing exactly how world leaders, health professionals, the business community, media and ordinary citizens can work together to prevent epidemics, saving millions of lives.

Ticked: The Battle Over Lyme Disease in the South is the second installment of Discover In-Depth, Discover magazine's new longform series. In this deep investigation of the science surrounding Lyme disease, writer Wendy Orent dissects how tick-borne illness is diagnosed in the Southern United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) do not recognize Lyme even though thousands of people in the South have reported Lyme-like symptoms and debilitating illness.

Em História de uma vacina, a pediatra e especialista em doenças infecciosas, chefe do comitê científico da Fundação Bill e Melinda Gates, docente convidada de Oxford e criadora do primeiro mestrado em vacinologia do mundo, na Universidade de Siena, conta a trajetória do estudo brasileiro desde as conversas iniciais com a universidade britânica até a chegada dos primeiros lotes de vacina aplicados no país.

Sono organi raffinatissimi e delicati: sintetizzano, inventano, determinano il miracolo della vita. Sono i nostri polmoni, leggeri e preziosi, la loro attività non si può fermare nemmeno il tempo necessario per curarli, perché nessuno sopravvive senza ossigeno, nessuno può stare più di pochi minuti senza respirare. Quando un nuovo virus sconosciuto e letale ha cominciato a insidiare proprio i polmoni, ci siamo accorti che la maggior parte di noi li conosce pochissimo: come funzionano, cosa occorre per mantenerli in salute e cosa li mette in crisi?

El 13 de enero de 2020, Salvador Illa tomaba posesión de su nuevo cargo: Ministro de Sanidad. Ese mismo día, en la otra punta del mundo, las alertas empezaban a sonar en Wuhan. Transcurrido un tiempo prudencial y superada ya una de las peores crisis sanitarias de la historia, toca hacer balance y dar cuenta de lo acaecido. Esta es una crónica en primera persona de un año que transcurrió a un ritmo frenético, un libro que nos sumerge en la trastienda del poder, una pequeña sala de crisis desde la que se lideró y coordinó el trabajo de cientos de profesionales y en la que fue imposible aislarse de la gravedad y de la tensión con la que se vivía en España esos días.

Caldo estremo, uragani, piogge torrenziali, incendi, nuovi virus aggressivi come quello che ha segnato il mondo intero nel 2020. La natura ha cominciato a ribellarsi. E non c'è più tempo: l'impatto dell'uomo sul nostro pianeta ha un peso ormai insostenibile. Molte patologie infettive degli ultimi decenni, da Ebola all'AIDS, da hendra alla dengue, non sono solo tragedie dettate dal caso. C'è un nesso profondo tra la loro diffusione e i cambiamenti climatici, la deforestazione, l'inquinamento e anche la diseguaglianza sociale, perché povertà e fame sono alleati dei virus.

Malária, sífilis, tuberculose, ebola, gripe, aids, sarampo e outros males que atacam a humanidade revelam muito mais da nossa história do que imaginamos. Os passos do homem ao longo das épocas, pelos continentes, o início da utilização de vestimentas, a convivência com diversos animais, o encontro com outros seres humanos: tudo isso pode ser desvendado agora com o estudo microscópico de vírus, bactérias e parasitas que cruzaram - e cruzam - o nosso caminho.