Winner of the History of Science category of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Awards given by the Association of American PublishersWhy do racial and ethnic controversies become attached, as they often do, to discussions of modern genetics? How do theories about genetic difference become entangled with political debates about cultural and group differences in America? Such issues are a conspicuous part of the histories of three hereditary diseases: Tay-Sachs, commonly iden...

By the 1970s, a therapeutic revolution, decades in the making, had transformed hemophilia from an obscure hereditary malady into a manageable bleeding disorder. Yet the glory of this achievement was short lived. The same treatments that delivered some normalcy to the lives of persons with hemophilia brought unexpectedly fatal results in the 1980s when people with the disease contracted HIV-AIDS and Hepatitis C in staggering numbers. The Bleeding Disease recounts the promising and ...

No matter how broken our past or great our misfortunes, we can create a new beginning and build a life of love and kindness.Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives in the clutches of a cruel foster family. He finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger, books that take him to new worlds he can only imagine. He begins to hope that one day he might have a different life.As he grows, Steve is determined to unravel ...

Discover an astonishing true story of resilience and triumph that will inspire you.Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, Steve finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and begins to hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will...

"Must reading for every physician who cares for patients and every patient who wishes to get the best care." —Time magazineFrom Dr. Jerome Groopman, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and one of the world’s leading researchers in cancer and AIDS, a groundbreaking, profound view of twenty-first-century medical decision-making, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to ...

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D."The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When...

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book."[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times...

LURKING in our homes, hospitals, schools, and farms is a terrifying pathogen that is evolving faster than the medical community can track it or drug developers can create antibiotics to quell it. That pathogen is MRSA—methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus—and Superbug is the first book to tell the story of its shocking spread and the alarming danger it poses to us all.Doctors long thought that MRSA was confined to hospitals and clinics, infe...

For nearly thirty years, anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has traveled to some of the most impoverished places on earth to bring comfort and the best possible medical care to the poorest of the poor. Driven by his stated intent to "make human rights substantial," Farmer has treated patients—and worked to address the root causes of their disease—in Haiti, Boston, Peru, Rwanda, and elsewhere in the developing world. In 1987, with several colleagues, he founded Partners In Health to p...

Endemic and enzootic zoonoses cause about a billion cases of illness in people and millions of deaths every year, and emerging zoonoses are a rising threat to global health. Zoonoses – pathogenic organisms such as bacteria or viruses which we share with animals – cause more than 60% of human infectious diseases, and have been responsible for some of the most devastating disease outbreaks in recent years, including HIV, Ebola, and SARS. However, despite their huge, and rising, impact on hum...

The story of two doctors, a father and son, who practiced in very different times and the evolution of the ethics that profoundly influence health careAs a practicing physician and longtime member of his hospital’s ethics committee, Dr. Barron Lerner thought he had heard it all. But in the mid-1990s, his father, an infectious diseases physician, told him a stunning story: he had physically placed his body over an end-stage patient who had stopped breathing, prevent...

The brand-new final chapter from the revised edition of CURE UNKNOWN, the definitive, award-winning investigation into Lyme diseaseSince its original publication in 2008, CURE UNKNOWN has become known as a nuanced, groundbreaking picture of the intense controversy and crippling uncertainty surrounding Lyme disease, and the only book of its kind. Award-winning journalist Pamela Weintraub reveals her personal struggle with Lyme after she and her family became serious...