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Lädt ... Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (2004)von Maryn McKenna
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. This is a book about the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the "disease detective corps" of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For three weeks, Ph.D.s, nurses, doctors, veterinarians, dentists, and even lawyers are trained in epidemiology and public health. They are put through a rigorous class schedule, frightening simulations, and even yanked out of classes to deal with disease outbreaks. Once they are fully trained, they spend two years working where-ever they are needed. Their work is multi-pronged: they go door-to-door, interviewing every contact of an infected person; they use molecular biology to pin down which cases of a disease are involved in an outbreak; they reassure the public. Sometimes they are assigned to work in a state, coordinating and investigating. But with only days or even hours notice, members of the EIS fly into war-torn countries to work with refugees, into politically charged anthrax investigations, to Listeria outbreaks afflicting a trailer park. They must be prepared for any situation. This is a very exciting book! McKenna splits the chapters between the culture and training of the EIS (they have to wear full military uniform every Wednesday, for instance), and their investigation of disease outbreaks. Both are fascinating, but hampered because McKenna insists on writing a full paragraph about the family and professional life of every person mentioned, no matter how tangential. A better book would have focused on a few people, or cut out the sentences about their build and how many children they have. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in public health. Zeige 5 von 5 keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
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IN THE WAR AGAINST DISEASES, THEY ARE THE SPECIAL FORCES. They always keep a bag packed. They seldom have more than twenty-four hours' notice before they are dispatched. The phone calls that tell them to head to the airport, sometimes in the middle of the night, may give them no more information than the country they are traveling to and the epidemic they will tackle when they get there. The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease. These doctors run toward it. They are the disease detective corps of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) -- a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons -- and, like intelligence operatives in the traditional sense, they perform their work largely in anonymity. They are not household names, but over the years they were first to confront the outbreaks that became known as hantavirus, Ebola virus, and AIDS. Now they hunt down the deadly threats that dominate our headlines: West Nile virus, anthrax, and SARS. In this riveting narrative, Maryn McKenna -- the only journalist ever given full access to the EIS in its fifty-three-year history -- follows the first class of disease detectives to come to the CDC after September 11, the first to confront not just naturally occurring outbreaks but the man-made threat of bioterrorism. They are talented researchers -- many with young families -- who trade two years of low pay and extremely long hours for the chance to be part of the group that has helped eradicate smallpox, push back polio, and solve the first major outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, and E. coli O157. Urgent, exhilarating, and compelling, Beating Back the Devil goes with the EIS as they try to stop epidemics -- before the epidemics stop us. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)614.4Technology Medicine and health Public Health Contagious and infectious diseasesKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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I did learn a lot of interesting stats about listeria and SARS. I may never eat cold cuts again. ( )