Customer Reviews

Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections

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I've read several other books on this same sort of topic, including the seminal work by Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plauge. This new entry into the category of books devoted to germs is a genuine winner. I couldn't put this one down. There's no doubt that this stuff is scary. After reading "Secret Agents" you kind of figure that you shouldn't eat, drink, breathe, or go on too many picnics where you might come into contact with disease carrying insects. But the bottom line is that these frightening facts are not the stuff of some novelist's imagination -- this stuff is true. Which makes it even more disturbing -- and compelling -- to read. Even though bioterrorism is much on everyone's mind these days, Drexler reminds us that most of the diseases that would be weaponized and used against us are the creation of good old Mother Nature. And She's perfectly capable of packing a wallop all on her own. The writing is sharp and crisp, the germ-hunting stories fascinating. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good scientific detective story. If you enjoy it as much as I did, you'll end up finishing this in one sitting.
P.S. Cool cover (catch that dead crow, the sentinel of doom that announces the presence of diseases like West Nile).

Madeline Drexler's book is as frightening as she wants it to be. Secret Agents is a gripping, well-written fast read that should deeply frighten everyone on first glance. The subtitle is the menace of emerging infections but it could almost be changed to the menace of everything. There seems little escape from the possible scenarios she clearly presents (and this clarity is definately one of the book's strengths as she makes bio-science quite understandable for the layperson.) The chapter on the West Nile Virus that begins the book is particularly exciting and will the hook the reader immediately. If one pauses to look at the actual numbers, the book is somewhat less frightening as the numbers of deaths are always substantially below many of the doom-sayers' predictions, although she will repeatedly tell the reader this may not always be so. A fascinating book for our times.

In "Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections," author Madeline Drexler takes us deep into the world of fast-moving microorganisms that can sicken people and end lives before doctors, hospitals or health agencies know what hit. Drexler shows "the bugs" at work in a well-chosen group of past and potential public health crises, including the West Nile virus's surprise hop across the Atlantic and the inevitable next influenza pandemic. With clarity and style, Drexler depicts in detail the characters in each drama: the amazingly adaptable bugs and the scientists and agency officials who must face them down. Meticulously researched, "Secret Agents" presents not only the scientific, but also the historic, political and economic contexts of approaching the seemingly intractable public health issues raised by the bugs. In the end, Drexler writes, such problems can only be addressed in a global context, in the interests of both rich and poor countries and the people who inhabit them. A fascinating read.

Having been an avid follower for years of Madeline Drexler's medical writing in The Boston Globe, I was looking forward to this book. But it surpassed my expectations. This was such a pleasure to read (if you can call it `pleasure' to read about the terrifying creativity of life-threatening microbes) that I raced through it in just a few days. Every sentence is lucid and lively, and Drexler's dry sense of humor makes you laugh even while you're reading about how we coexist with a daunting number of viruses, microbes, bacteria, and all the rest. There's an endless parade of riveting stories in here: detective stories about public health gumshoes chasing down an outbreak; vignettes that I can only call `biographies' of various microbes, fascinating even for an English major like me; stories of close combat between researchers and infections, of public health turf battles, of scientists' odd insights and obsessions, and much more. The amount of research that's poured into here is just unbelievable, revealing the seamy underworld of infection that we all live with daily-making this far more unnerving (not to mention better written) than a Stephen King novel. Readable and riveting, not to be missed.

"The reason the lethal spore-forming bacillus Clostridium botulinum - the cause of botulism - hasn't leveled our species is because when it kills us with it's toxins, it kills it's chance to spread." - Page 12.

So, it seems like she had an idea for a sentence: illustrate that diseases that quickly kill have a tougher time finding new hosts. She needed to pick a deadly disease, so she went with botulism for some reason. But unfortunately for this example, botulism is not contagious. The reason this disease hasn't "leveled our species" is because it's not contagious - it's a type of food poisoning.

This is just another book written by a non-scientist that throws around sensationalized examples without prior research. There are no notes or citations is the back, which seems to be common among books with this problem. This should also serve as a warning sign for a quickly written attempt at popular science that forgets the purpose of its existence: to relay factual information in an interesting way. If the facts are wrong, it's just a really boring fiction.

How can you not love a book that starts "Infection is an inescapable part of life. All creatures feast on other creatures and in turn are feasted upon, in a kind of Escheresque food chain."!!
This is an amazing book that takes readers on a journey through the world of human encounters with "secret agents" of the micro-world: West Nile virus, food illnesses, resistant superbugs, flu, and, of course, bioterrorism.
What I really liked about this book is that it is both a public health detective story, and a primer for the non-scientist on the shifting state of the "bugs and us" story. Drexler's writing is breathtaking, and you really feel as though you're right there in the labs and fields with the scientists and epidemiologists who are now -- especially now -- on the front lines of discovery and decisions about disease.
This is a really smart book that's a must for anyone who's interested in the natural world, public health, scientific discovery, medical research. After 9/11, everyone's interested in bioterrorist weapons. Drexler puts the post-9/11 anthrax releases in context of military programs to develop super-bio-weapons .. and shows how the anthrax threat might be one of the biggest "blow-back" military threats yet.
The last chapter, the author wraps up by making the case for the importance of global public health monitoring, cooperation, and she locates the role of disease and infection in contemporary geopolitics.
This is hot off the press.. and hot! Easy to read, but packed with info. This book will open your eyes to the hidden "parallel-universe" world of microbes, bugs, viruses we travel with and through. Thoughtful, thought-provoking. A don't-miss read.

After hearing Madeline Drexler speak at my university, I had to read this book. It is clear that Ms. Drexler has put forth a lot of effort toward producing a well-researched and well-written book. There are many quotes from professionals on the front lines of infection control, and there are many examples of normal people suffering from frightening and strange emerging infections.

Drexler's book offers a warning that we must focus on public health issues if we hope to avoid the tragedy that an agent such as a pandemic flu could cause. The book is filled with warnings about the overuse of antibiotics and the inefficiency of public health beauracracy and lack of funding. I hope that more professionals and lay people read this book and heed its message.

The battle between humans and disease-causing microorganisms is not a fair fight. Bacteria, for instance, have been around for a billion or so years more than we have. They are intricately involved in every part of our outer world and our innards. No one has come close to listing all the microbes we carry around inside us even when we are healthy, but medical journalist Madeline Drexler, in _Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections_ (Joseph Henry Press) reports that we are "walking petri dishes" to keep our bacteria and viruses going. She begins her detailed and frightening book: "Infection is an inescapable part of life. All creatures feast on other creatures and in turn are feasted upon, in a kind of Escheresque food chain. When humans are the meal, we call it infectious disease." Infections have always been our lot, but there are, in the twenty-first century, new ways for them to be particularly worrisome, and Drexler's fine book ought to be required reading for citizens and public leaders the world over.

The examples Drexler gives of disasters and near-disasters are chilling. Microbes never had it so good. They profit, for example, by the way the world can now share its food supply, enabling bizarre accidents to happen. A vandal shoots up the water chlorination system of his Mexican village, and causes (via parsley) food poisoning in hundreds of Minnesotans. Alfalfa sprouts, beloved by vegetarians, are grown in heat and moisture just right for salmonella from the Netherlands. You no longer have to travel to get traveler's diarrhea; it will visit you at home, and maybe it will be fatal. Not only are microbes jetting around the world (and not just on food, of course, but also in infected humans), but they are simply outsmarting our ability to kill them. Microorganisms are beating our antibiotics by the simple mechanisms of evolution. More patients are dying from infections that were easily curable thirty years ago. The next world flu is overdue, and because of speed of modern travel and older populations, it will have advantages that no others have ever had. Legionnaire's disease, tuberculosis, West Nile virus, bubonic plague, AIDS, and more all get their pages here. Then there is bioterrorism. There is reason for a good deal of pessimism.

It would be wrong to assume that there is nothing but pessimism, though. Governments are going to have to have to stop putting their own citizens first and start thinking about doing the right thing for the world's humans. Drexler makes a clear case that the Bush administration's rejection of the Biological Weapons Convention (when all other nations had accepted it), because it threatened national security or the commercial secrets of the drug companies, encourages rogue states to work on their deadly brews. Bioterrorism aside, at least some nations and epidemiologists are recognizing that any nation's infection is the world's infection. Health authorities have, in the past, been able to spot unusual clusters of disease and intervene; nowadays, this is going to take swift identification of the germ (there are exciting new gadgets that might do this without the days required to culture the organism) and rapid communication about the threat. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is changing international health measures by pouring billions of dollars into the effort. It will take money in all nations; even the US federal, state, and local health departments (for instance) are underfunded and ill-equipped. It may be that the bioterror threat is going to do some good as we enter an age of increased threat from natural disease as well; boosted national systems that are keyed for man-made infection emergencies could help protect us as more powerful infections visit us from all over. Even if the terrorists stop bothering us, the microbes won't; we might take the heroic measures needed to protect the world, or we might continue the status quo.

As a neophyte in the understanding of bacteria and infectious desease I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Knowing how fine a line we walk in our symbiotic relationship with bacteria is as frightening as it is fascinating. I belive this book should be required reading in schools.

On this morning's news I heard a story about a salmonella outbreak caused by sprouts. Immediately my mind turned the pages back to a chapter in Emerging Epidemics, a book I just finished reading. Drexler warns the reader about the inherent danger of bacteria thriving in sprouts because of the way sprouts are grown, packaged, shipped, and stored. The sprouts incident is one of many examples of facts in Drexler's book springing to life in the world around us, a dangerous world where outbreaks of disease or toxins are ready to emerge when we least expect them.

I'm not well versed in science or microbes, but I've developed a late life interest in microbes and read every mainstream book I can get my hands on. Emerging Epidemics is a very readable, informative and relevant book for the layman. It can be frightening and unnerving at times, but foreknowledge can help one cope with the medical calamities that are sure to occur.

Though I've read multiple accounts of the events leading up to the discovery of West Nile virus, I still found Drexler's account riveting, and she didn't disappoint by mentioning (like the others) the Maryland educated scientist who sports bling and form fitting miniskirts.


Some highlights:
Someone on the fence could easily tip to the vegan side after reading this book. Drexler explains the long standing practice of giving maintenance antibiotics to cattle and fowl which may have led to the emergence of a deadly ecoli strain and antibiotic resistant bacteria in animals and humans. She bemoans the ubiquitousness of antibacterials and their counter-productiveness.

Triclosan is singled out as the most pervasive and insidious antibacterial agents found in hundreds of consumer products. Tricosan kills indiscriminely, the good bacteria with the bad. The chemical causes more harm to the environment after being flushed down the drain,and has created tricolsan resistant E coli.

The author pains a bleak picture of how vulverable we are to bioterrorism and agricultural sabotage of crops and livestock. "The possibilities of mayhem are endless."

Emerging Epidemics, updated in 2009, is an eye opener and highly recommended for the general reader.