Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens

Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens

by Muhammad H. Zaman
Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens

Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens

by Muhammad H. Zaman

Hardcover

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Overview

Award-winning Boston University educator and researcher Muhammad H. Zaman provides a chilling look at the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, explaining how we got here and what we must do to address this growing global health crisis.

In September 2016, a woman in Nevada became the first known case in the U.S. of a person who died of an infection resistant to every antibiotic available. Her death is the worst nightmare of infectious disease doctors and public health professionals. While bacteria live within us and are essential for our health, some strains can kill us. As bacteria continue to mutate, becoming increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, we are likely to face a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions. “It will be like the great plague of the middle ages, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 all combined into a single threat,” Muhammad H. Zaman warns.

The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving it: pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe.

Joining the ranks of acclaimed works like Microbe Hunters, The Emperor of All Maladies, and Spillover, A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062862976
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 04/21/2020
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 1,133,728
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Muhammad H. Zaman, PhD, is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University. His work has been published in Nature, Science, and Lancet

Planetary Health, among other magazines. In addition, his opinion pieces and columns have appeared in leading newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, U.S. News & World Report, El País, and Japan Times; on Al Jazeera; at the World Economic Forum; and through dozens of other outlets. He lives with his family in the greater Boston area.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 What We're Up Against 5

Chapter 2 Fifty Million Dead 11

Chapter 3 Time and Space 21

Chapter 4 Friends in far Places 29

Chapter 5 Near the Seed Vault 37

Chapter 6 Keys to Karachi 41

Chapter 7 War and Peace 47

Chapter 8 From the Phages of History 59

Chapter 8 Sulfa and the War 67

Chapter 10 Mold Juice 75

Chapter 11 Tablets from Tears 85

Chapter 12 The New Pandemic 91

Chapter 13 The Man In The Blue Mustang 99

Chapter 14 Honeymoon 107

Chapter 15 Mating Bacteria 119

Chapter 16 S is for Soviet 125

Chapter 17 The Navy Boys 137

Chapter 18 From Animals to Humans 143

Chapter 19 The Norwegian Salmon 151

Chapter 20 Closer to Sydney Than to Perth 159

Chapter 21 A Classless Problem 165

Chapter 22 The Stubborn Wounds of War 177

Chapter 23 Counting the Dead 185

Chapter 24 Clues in the Sewage 191

Chapter 25 X is for Extensive 197

Chapter 26 Too Much or Too Little? 201

Chapter 27 Visa not Required 207

Chapter 28 The Dry Pipeline 215

Chapter 29 New Ways to Do Old Business 219

Chapter 30 A Three-Hundred-Year-Old Idea 229

Chapter 31 Spoonful of Sugar 235

Chapter 32 Conflict Inside the Cells 239

Chapter 33 Security or Service? 245

Chapter 34 One World, One Health 251

Chapter 35 Bankers, Doctors, and Diplomats 257

Epilogue 263

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 271

Index 293

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