Customer Reviews

Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of People, Parasites, and Politics

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Anything written by Robert Desowitz is always a worthwhile read and his most recent (and sadly, last) book, "Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of Parasites, People, and Politics," is no exception. His expertise on human infectious diseases is impressive and thorough. He discusses the little known behind the scenes intrigues involved with the attempts to deal with malaria, West Nile virus, sleeping sickness, and several others. He also discusses the effects of global warming on the spread of infectious diseases and the roll of DDT in suppressing malaria specifically.

His earlier book "The Malaria Capers" (1991) should be read to completely understand the political and even criminal problems that developed within the malaria vaccine research program. These problems landed some researchers in jail and certainly have added little or nothing to the development of a real vaccine. The vaccine is tough to produce (over 70 years has so far been spent on the search) because of the fact that Plasmodium falciparum (the main target of vaccines as it is the main, if not sole cause of death from malaria) is a much more complicated organism than the viruses and bacteria that are usually the target. Because of its complex life cycle and ability to avoid antibodies and parasite-killing cells, malaria soon escapes any vaccine so far developed. A Colombian researcher is supposed to have a 100% effective vaccine, but Desowitz is rightly skeptical. As I have not heard of the vaccine being a success, I will have to agree.

The problems with DDT discussed by Desowitz demonstrate that there are no easy ways out. DDT was banned for agricultural use pretty much worldwide within a decade or so of the publication of "Silent Spring." It has since been used for malaria control in many tropical countries and has been more than a little effective, even though resistance had built up in mosquitoes in many areas (Desowitz notes that some researchers think that resistance was helped by the huge amounts of DDT used in agriculture). There is little doubt that DDT was an ecological disaster when it was broadcasted throughout the environment. However, there is a movement to ban it even for anti-malarial use and Desowitz thinks that this may be wrong-headed. I am not sure about this, but I have to admit that it is not my children that are at stake (at least for the present time!) However, if global warming continues (and neither Desowitz nor I am under any illusion that it will not) we may be staring at a lot of new and old diseases (including malaria- which has already made some incursions) that we never thought possible in the United States. Then we may sing a different tune!

This book should be read by everyone concerned about emerging diseases, whether brought by terrorists or (much more likely) by human movement and trade. It should also open anyone's eyes to the lack of efficiency of many organizations charged with the protection of world and national health.

Epidemiologist Robert Desowitz gets a few things off his chest in this free-swinging frolic through the world of infectious disease with an emphasis on politics, economics and human stupidity. In particular he is not happy about the fact that Big Pharma doesn't find it cost effective to work on drugs that might save lives in Third World countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa, home of not only Ebola and AIDS, but perennial killers, malaria and sleeping sickness. He also doesn't care for the bad press that DDT has endured since "Saint Rachel" (p. 57) published her manifesto, averring that "Nothing has ever equaled DDT" for controlling "the spineless blood-suckers" (mosquito, fly, and tick vectors) that bring dengue, plague, typhus, malaria, sleeping sickness, etc. to our bodies, and that "no essential public measure [the use of DDT] has been so irrationally denied."

He makes a good case. It seems that in saving the ospreys and the eagles and other creatures of the wild we have allowed disease vectors to flourish resulting in countless millions of human lives lost. This surprising point of view, however, made me realize once again the false dilemma that we often put ourselves into, that of "them or us." At some point our rapacious desire to increase our numbers at the expense of our planet home must cease otherwise we will find ourselves alone with our mice and rats, our cows and pigs, our cockroaches and our sheep, our fields of soy and wheat and selected parasites, the rest of nature gone the way of the dodo. Do we need more humans or do we need to save the rainforests? My answer is that we must reduce our numbers and live in concert with nature. Desowitz does not consider this larger point of view in his book. I wish he had.

He does however realize that we need more doctors and that medical schools ought to let more people in. He notes that "Innovative teaching methods can now accommodate double the student intake," wryly adding that "This may force some of the doctors in the new, bigger pool to switch from BMWs to Buicks." (p. 56) He also wants the World Health Organization reformed, calling it "a too-politicized body, best at furnishing slogans." (p. 124) Additionally, he would like to see the big pharmaceutical companies rearrange their priorities. He laments how a drug called DFMO is being manufactured for use as a depilatory to rid women of "uglifying facial hair" (with glossy ads in Cosmopolitan, Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines) when it could better be used to fight sleeping sickness in Uganda and Sudan. (p. 146) One of his pet peeves is the way our patent laws work in respect to genetic material--part of a "patent or perish" syndrome. (See page 203.) He quotes then US secretary of commerce Ronald Brown to the effect that genetic material can be taken from you and patented for the enrichment of someone else and there is nothing you can do about it. (p. 200) Some people call this "biopiracy." (p. 193)

In the later chapters (which are among the most readable in the book) Desowitz considers the possibility that global warming will result in tropical diseases moving north. There's not only that possibility, but with the rise in the sea level and the flooding of rivers, temperate-zone sewers may back up just as they do in, e.g., Bangladesh, and we will have cholera right here in River City.

Desowitz, who is retired and therefore free to say what he thinks without fear of losing some grant or offending those who could torpedo a career, lets the chips fall where they may. Near the end of the book he recalls a Nigerian who supplemented his income by selling human waste. It seems that the Nigerian "pagan farmers...believed that the white man's protein-rich diet made his feces a superior fertilizer"(!) He ends the book with a not so facetious suggestion that maybe we ought "to exploit this bounteous natural gift" to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. (pp. 241-242)

This sort of candid, tell-it-like-it-is expression is the strength of this mostly readable book. Its weakness is that sometimes Desowitz loses awareness of his readership and gets too technical and too minuscule in his delineation of disease politics. He has a few axes to grind and sometimes stays too long at the wheel. Furthermore it is apparent that sometimes he is addressing other professionals and working out old disputes in a way that the general reader cannot fully appreciate.

Bottom line: Desowitz is authoritative and unbeholden to political correctness; he is passionate and writes with verve and a sometimes striking expression, and he is clearly an expert on the material covered.

I'm fascinated by the ongoing war between us humans and the bacteria, viruses and other pathogens that plague us. So, I was eager to dive into Robert Desowitz's interestingly titled book, Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: Tales of Parasites, People and Politics. The book jacket told me that Desowitz is a leading epidemiologist and the author of four other books in the area. I was hoping to get his insider's view of epidemic or emerging diseases, what's being done about them, and the politics of drug development and distribution.

There was certainly some interesting information in the book. I hadn't known, for example, that the global ban on DDT that flowed from Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring inadvertently had a devastating effect on the worldwide effort to eradicate malaria. Desowitz points out that spraying DDT in the houses of people living in malaria-ridden regions was the mainstay of the eradication program, and was very successful. DDT sprayed inside houses did not contribute significantly to the thinning of birds' eggshells that was a key feature of Carson's argument, but saved the lives of millions of people. Unfortunately, this anti-malaria use of DDT was swept away along with other more destructive uses.

Desowitz also provided an interesting blow-by-blow description of the 1999 outbreak of West Nile Virus in New York. Given the risk of bioterrorism, it's sobering to learn that it took from May 21 to September 25 for health authorities to notice and begin to get a grip on the outbreak. Each of twenty or so local, state, and Federal agencies noted one piece of the puzzle--the death of wild birds, the death of birds at a zoo, and human illness and deaths, but it took forever for anyone to see the whole picture. Let's hope that our health agencies have improved both their alertness and their inter-agency communication. If not, we're in big trouble if bioterrorists strike again.

And, in his defense, Desowitz doesn't pull any punches whether he is criticizing health authorities for their failure to communicate, drug companies for their greed or environmentalists for their sometimes one-sided zeal.

What the book does not offer is coherency or consistency. In the midst of presenting one topic, Desowitz jumps into another, and as often as not interrupts that with a wisecrack about something else entirely. Early on, he describes his fellow epidemiologists as cranky and idiosyncratic. That's exactly how he comes across in the book. For me at least, that idiosyncratic style really got in the way of what he was trying to say. I kept comparing this book to Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer, which is a model of devoted reporting, clear thinking and vivid writing. The contrast with Desowitz's book could not be stronger. I had the impression that Desowitz basically phoned this one in, with predictable results.

Robert Adler, ...

Robert Desowitz has been associated with many of the recent efforts to control various diseases which are faciliated by parasites; I found his comments quite interesting.