Product Description
Fear of mad cow disease, a lethal illness transmitted from infected beef to humans, has spread from Europe to the United States and around the world. Originally published to much acclaim in France, this scientific thriller, available in English for the first time and updated with a new chapter on developments in 2001, tells of the hunt for the cause of an enigmatic class of fatal brain infections, of which mad cow disease is the latest incarnation. In gripping, nontechnical prose, Maxime Schwartz details the deadly manifestations of these diseases throughout history, describes the major players and events that led to discoveries about their true nature, and outlines our current state of knowledge. The book concludes by addressing the question we all want answered: should we be afraid?The story begins in the eighteenth century with the identification of a mysterious illness called scrapie that was killing British sheep. It was not until the 1960s that scientists understood that several animal and human diseases, including scrapie, were identical, and together identified them as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The various guises assumed throughout history by TSE include an illness called kuru in a cannibalistic tribe in Papua New Guinea, an infectious disease that killed a group of children who had been treated for growth hormone deficiencies, and mad cow disease. Revealing the fascinating process of scientific discovery that led to our knowledge of TSE, Schwartz relates pivotal events in the history of biology, including the Pasteurian revolution, the birth of genetics, the emergence of molecular biology, and the latest developments in biotechnology. He also explains the Nobel Prize-winning prion hypothesis, which has rewritten the rules of biological heredity and is a key link between the distinctive diseases of TSE.Up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly captivating, How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This authoritative book is a stunning case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Solid, if surface-level, overfiew of mad cow and other TSEs
Schwartz does a good job with the history of scrapie, kuru, vCJD, etc. However, once we get to Prusiner and prion territory, while she does a good job of explaining his conclusions (along with those who generally agree), she doesn't fully look at the controversy over prions, or the controversy over whether or not Prusiner was making a "Nobel push."

This is a solid introduction, but read somebody like Richard Rhodes, "Deadly Feasts," for much more detail on the modern end. (Rhodes does a bit much ax-grinding on Prusinder, though.)

Well Written, Scary as heck
An amazing tour of the history of prion diseases.From start to finish, it's well written, beuatifully explained and frighrening.If this book hasn't scared you, read it again

The molecular biology is astounding
This is a very complicated matter, with highly specific vocabulary that attempts to describe a variety of forms of a disease which is capable of being distinguished by different incubation periods in the various inbred species of genetically pure or altered mice that have been inoculated with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) in the strains that have been isolated before the French edition of this book went to press near the end of the year 2000.A key word is prion, a protein that might form part of the membrane of a normal cell.Originally in this book, prion was defined by Stanley Prusiner, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1997, in 1982 as the carrier of the infection for TSEs."Prions are small proteinaceous infectious particles which are resistant to inactivation by most procedures that modify nucleic acids."(p. 100).Forming rods in a polymer structure, ultimately doctors, "when examining brain tissue from kuru patients, had been able to recognize what they called amyloid plaques" (pp. 101-102).

Assuming that any cow in England which showed signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was an indication that the entire herd had been fed contaminated meat and bone meal, (from "forty-six British plants that until 1988 had converted a total of 1.3 million metric tons of meat and bones into animal feed" p. 147), "the total number of cattle affected by the disease from the beginning of the epidemic until the end of 2000 was nearly two hundred thousand in Great Britain," (p. 151).Since the cow form of the disease and the sheep form act differently in mice who are infected, a grand experimental test was performed to see if any sheep have picked up the BSE form:

"In the summer of 2001, rumors began to circulate to the effect that the BSE agent had been found in sheep; the official outcome was to be announced at the end of the year.Europe's health authorities were in a state of red alert.If the results were positive, drastic steps would have to be taken in the sheep-farming sector.Then, just two days before the outcome was made public, there was a dramatic announcement:The researchers had made a mistake.They had mingled samples of sheep brains with samples of cattle brains--and thus there are still no data on the possible transmission of BSE to sheep in natural conditions."(p. 188).

I have noticed that when people try to assign unique numbers to anything, there is always someone who fails to notice that two of those numbers are not the same.I have even worked with a computer that had so few consecutive numbers in a field that it was not able to tell the difference between numbers that had more than the number of digits in the field.There are forty million sheep in Britain, few of which look like cows, even in that night in which all cows are black, but worse than that: the brain samples might look a lot like brain samples from a cow.This experiment was more than double blind if no one kept tract of how samples were mingled.

I love the word epizootic:"Why was an epizootic--an animal epidemic--declared at one particular time, the early 1980s, and only in the United Kingdom?"(p. 189).It must be related to "the death of six white tigers from the Bristol zoo between 1970 and 1977; they died of what was then diagnosed as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, but no one knows what became of the corpses. . . .After all, it isn't often that a cow eats tiger in the way that we eat beef."(p. 190).There are so many things no one knows.

Boring & Dry
Maxime Schwartz was a molecular biologist and is now a professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.Schwartz traces the history of medical research into spongiform encephalopathies, and how the scientific understanding of how they are spread has changed over time.If you know anything about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow disease, I don't think you'll learn anything new in this book.How the Cows Turned Mad is not a sensational book, nor even a good book.Quite simply it is too wordy and dull. ... Read more

Product Description
This new book gathers information related to Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease. It is far from clear whether adequate measures are being taken in America to protect the people from this terrifying disease. The major problem is a tug-of-war between the desires of the meat processors to maximise profits and the people to be protected. The USDA has so far maintained a solid record which may be tested in the near future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A MUST HAVE
After getting this book from the Library and reading it cover to cover, I realized I needed to own it. It was a huge eye opener. I did not know very much about Mad Cow Disease and this is a great reference, little, concise and straight to the point book.
I know I will read it again, it made such an impression on me...And I will consult it when people have questions about some unexplained maladies, like Alzheimer's, or muscle weaknesses, or behavioral changes...
After reading this book, or just becaming aware of the intricacies of Mad Cow Disease for that matter, you will never look at Life, People or Illness the same way. Your level of awareness, definitely, skyrockets.
We don't know what the future holds, and "forewarned is forearmed".





... Read more

Product Description
Ever wonder if the hamburger you are eating is safe?How about the milk you poured for your child?Chances are that it isn't. You might not know that because the truth has been kept from you, until now.This is the story of my friend's struggle to expose the conspiracy that has allowed Mad Cow Disease to endanger millions world wide.Hopefully it is not too late. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Uninformative
I do not recommend spending money on this book.I am very concerned about Mad Cow Disease and BSE -- to the point where I only eat beef purchased from local farmers who guarantee that their cows have not eaten other animals.I was looking for a book that would give me more infomation on what governments are and aren't doing to protect people from this disease.Instead I got what can only be a fictional short story, and a very poorly written one at that.I think it was quite rude of the author not to specifically mention that his book is fiction, since its scoffingly unconvincing narrative might only serve to encourage skeptics to dismiss the possibility that goverments aren't doing all they should to protect their citizens from this disease.

I'll never look at a burger the same
Is this for real? The author leaves me wondering whether I should eat beef or not. It reminds me of War of the Worlds. How much danger are we really in. I would recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about Mad Cow Disease. ... Read more

Product Description
Recommends possible strategies to prevent bovine spongiform encephalopathy from spreading. Considers cyclic amplification of scrapie prion protein and its implications for diagnosis, as well as the sensitive detection of prion proteins by immunoassay. Discusses prion detection techniques and their application to ensure the safety of biological products. ... Read more

Product Description
At once a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story, this powerful, first-hand account of life on the frontiers of science tells of the adventures of Dr. Robert Klitzman, whose research provided important keys to understanding Mad Cow Disease, potentially the world's next major epidemic. 75 photos.Amazon.com Review
The key word here is personal. Physician RobertKlitzman tells us his life story and humanizes what could easily havebeen a tabloid-size horror story of Stone Age cannibals androtten-brained cows. Vivid portraits of the men and women he helpedand worked with lift this book above mere sensationalism, showing onepeople's tragedy in the hopes that others can be averted.

Kuru is afatal disease formerly epidemic among the Fore people of New Guinea,with symptoms including involuntary laughing, dementia, and loss ofmotor control. Traced to their ritual cannibalism, it was found to becaused by nonliving crystal-like proteins in the brain. Klitzmantraveled to New Guinea before attending medical school to work withthese people and quickly learned how little Western medicine could dofor the afflicted--he could only make their deaths as comfortable aspossible. His despair is palpable.

Fortunately, most Fore have beenconvinced to give up the most dangerous of their ancestral practices,and the disease has largely abated. But mad cow disease (and otherslike it), caused by the same class of protein as kuru, remains athreat to Westerners--a threat Klitzman would rather we not face. Hisvery personal story forces us as readers to examine our own lives andour own ancestral practices, perhaps to make some changesourselves. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Foaming at the Mouth about New Guinea
This is a really awful book - embarrassingly bad writing (p.205 "How was your trip?" Roger asked with disgust, foaming at the mouth." Page 276:"Ray's blue eyes exploded in ecstasy as he spied a butterfly.") Also, there are many sentences that one must skip or pause to decipher because the sentence just doesn't make any sense.(Who the heck edited this book?)

The book contains precious little about Kuru and less about cannibalism.Also there is not much on Mad Cow Disease.There is here lots and lots and lots of Robert Klitzman.But, even as a "personal account," this book is sadly not very interesting or readable. (Maybe if the author had published this as an edited journal date by date, it would have worked a bit better. Ah, maybe not.)

We read that there amid the fleas and the smelly New Guinea people he thinks about his future."I decided that I wanted to live an active life, engaged with the world.What I had seen and learned intellectually from Carlton [Gajdusekan - Nobel Prize winner and "sadly" convicted pedophile] was living life. Literary critics [and presumably editors] missed the point by being too analytic and petty, I thought."

This is essentially a vanity publication [and rip-off of the reading public].Perhaps it is interesting to some relative or close friend of the author (though I doubt it).While the author can add this title to his list of publications, the author should pray that no future writing monies ever depend on the quality of this book.

I cannot imagine any reason anyone would waste his/her time or money on this dreadful book.

Fascinating
This book tells the story of a young man who travels to Papua New Guinea to try his hand at medical research.The book jackets accurately describes it as "a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story."Just one year out of college, Klitzman sets off to Papua New Guinea alone to work on a project arranged by Carleton Gajdusek to survey the incubation time for kuru.Klitzman soon finds himself living in the Highlands, where he spends his time seeking out former cannibals who are dying of kuru so that he can interview them about when they last ate human flesh.

Klitzman's cultural insights are quite compelling- -instead of finding fault with all that frustrates him, he is able to put the difficulties in context and realize that people are much the same everywhere, underneath their material trappings.One of the fascinating facets of this book is that at the time when Klitzman was doing his research in PNG, kuru was dying out- -the project that he was working on was to find the incubation period for a disease without a future, or so it seemed at the time.When Mad Cow began popping up a few years after Klitzman finished his project, the results suddenly became extremely important for trying to estimate potential deaths due to tainted beef.The book serves as a good reminder that basic research may prove its worth long after the fact.

The book's main narrative takes place in Papua New Guinea in 1983-84, 7 years after independence.It provides interesting historical documentation of living conditions in PNG in the time immediately following independence.In 1997, Klitzman returns to the area where he did his research, and observes how many aspects of life in PNG had deteriorated in the intervening time, despite the quantity of wealth coming into the country.For this reason, area specialists may find much of interest in Klitzman's detailed descriptions of living conditions in the early 1980s in PNG.

Strange Title - Amazing Adventure
I had read Dr Klitzman's earlier book "Being Positive" and wanted to read more of his work, the title sounded very strange but bought the book after the life affirming experience of reading the first. DrKlitzman is one hell of an explorer !, brave, adventurous and a greatmedical investigator and researcher. The Papua New Guinea Highlands mighthold the answers to the questions that medical researchers have been askingfor years and Dr Klitzman is a trail blazer to these answers. This storydeserves to be read by anyone who is affected directly or indirectly by anydisease from cancer to HIV, it will give you a better insight and hope.

An extraordinary story by a gifted writer
Written with the intensity of a thriller, THE TREMBLING MOUNTAIN is a brilliant examination of the cultures of the mind.Read it now.

A poorly written, poorly proofread book
The subject of cannibalism should grab the attention of the reader.Instead, on page after page, you are startled by grammatical inconsistencies.Nobody has bothered to proofread this book -- not theauthor, the reader, the editor.The author does not transport you in anyway into an exotic world, but instead has you grinding your teeth as youread through such language as "I seen..."This reads like ahasty job, not one that has been put together with love and pride. ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents important analyses of current issues in BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or "mad cow disease") as a fatal neurological disease of cattle, believed to be transmitted mainly by feeding infected cattle parts back to cattle. More than 187,000 cases have been reported world-wide, 183,000 of them in the United Kingdom (UK) where BSE was first identified in 1986. The annual number of new cases has declined steeply since 1992. Humans who eat contaminated beef are believed susceptible to a rare, but fatal brain wasting disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). About 160 people have been diagnosed with vCJD since 1986, most in the UK and none linked to any Canadian or U.S. meat consumption. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from E, published by Earth Action Network, Inc. on July 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1164 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Brain Drain.(mad cow disease)
Author: Kathleen O'Neil
Publication: E (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 1999
Publisher: Earth Action Network, Inc.
Volume: 10Issue: 4Page: 25

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Mad Cow Disease," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Mad Cow Disease in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Mad Cow Disease when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Mad Cow Disease, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

Product Description
BSE is becoming an increasing concern as tainted beef has caused deadly outbreaks of the disease around the world. ... Read more

Product Description
Through mid-May 2007, the United States had confirmed three cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or 'mad cow disease'): the first in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow found in Washington state, the second in June 2005 in cow in Texas, and the third in March 2006 in a cow in Alabama. Shortly after the first case, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other officials announced measures to improve existing safeguards against the introduction and spread of BSE. Previously, the major safeguards were: USDA restrictions on imports of ruminants and their products from countries with BSE; a ban on feeding most mammalian proteins to cattle and other ruminants, issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); and a targeted domestic surveillance program by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the agency responsible for animal health monitoring and disease control. ... Read more

Product Description
In March 2001, the National Institutes of Health issued the following warning: "The number of Web sites offering health-related resources grows every day. Many sites provide valuable information, while others may have information that is unreliable or misleading."Furthermore, because of the rapid increase in Internet-based information, many hours can be wasted searching, selecting, and printing.This book was created for medical professionals, students, and members of the general public who want to conduct medical research using the most advanced tools available and spending the least amount of time doing so. ... Read more

Product Description

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has become the most publicly recognizable example of a group of fatal neurodegenerative diseases caused by proteinaceous infectious particles called prions. The contributors to this volume, all internationally recognized experts in their fields, provide an introduction to prion biology, followed by reviews of the latest information on BSE, vCJD, and chronic wasting disease, an animal prion disease that has recently emerged in North America.

Product Description
Mark Purdey's life changed one day in 1984, when a Ministry of Agriculture inspector told him he must administer a toxic organophosphate pesticide to his dairy herd. Passionately committed to organic farming and convinced of the harmful effects of chemicals in the environment, he refused to comply. "It was as if my whole life became focused," he explained later. Before they had a chance to prosecute, Purdey took the Ministry to court and won his case. Those experiences led him to challenge the orthodox line on the origins of Mad Cow Disease and its human counterpart, variant CJD. Could the insecticide used in the official program have precipitated the spread of the disease?

Purdey's quest to discover the truth was hampered at every turn by government bureaucracies and self-serving scientific cliques who sought to smear and marginalize him. Dogged by dirty tricks and forced to work alone as something of a scientific sleuth, he struggled to reveal hidden interests and dangerous secrets. His supporters included many members of the public, as well as Prince Charles, as well as the poet Ted Hughes, who wrote to him expressing "a million congratulations."

Increasingly sceptical of the official narrative, Purdey was certain that toxic environmental factors would provide answers, and so embarked on a self-funded worldwide odyssey to investigate. Animal Pharm follows him on these eco-detective trails to locations as diverse as Iceland, Sardinia, Colorado, and Australia. Purdey uncovers contamination from industry, munitions, pesticides, nuclear experiments, and natural geology, linking these with the emergence of a range of neurodegenerative diseases. His research is at once compelling and disturbing, helping to create a paradigm shift in our understanding of the relationship of pollutants to disease and health. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amazing information
If you read any book to find out more about Mad Cow disease, read this one. This guy offers a very in-depth, scientific, and fitting theory to explain Mad Cow and related neuro-degenerative diseases. He fuses several different scientific and academic disciplines in his attempt to take the mystery out of Mad Cow disease with first-hand, peer-reviewed research, and submits that it is rather a combination of several different factors that cause Mad Cow and variant-CJD; primarily a lack of trace elements in the body that are essential to the brain's blood-barrier defense, then followed by, simply put, heavy metal poisoning of the brain.

He studied clustered cases of CJD and Mad Cow around the world and discovered that at every location in which more than one case appeared in a locality, there was also a source of metal contaminant pollution nearby - often, he noted, upwind of the outbreak location - such as military munitions factories and disposal sites, and manganese mine and quarry outfits.

This book made a lot of sense to me with its truckload of scientific facts and figures, and has inspired me to take an interest (and maybe someday pursue further education) in possible chemical explanations of similar brain diseases. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Family Practice News, published by International Medical News Group on April 1, 2004. The length of the article is 578 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: FDA moves to minimize mad cow disease risks: tracking, testing.(News)
Author: Heidi Splete
Publication: Family Practice News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2004
Publisher: International Medical News Group
Volume: 34Issue: 7Page: 10(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more