Customer Reviews

And the Waters Turned to Blood

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rodney Barker did an excellent job at enlightening his readers of the dangers of pollution, the devastating effects of Pfiesteria, and the power of a political machine. The tale developes the story of one dedicated scientists fighting to make the world aware of the rise of a toxic dinoflagellate. A professor at North Carolina State University, Dr. JoAnn Burkholder never imagined being presented with such a massive problem on her hands. After identifying the morphing dinoflagellate as Pfiesteria piscicida, Burkholder realized that her troubles would not stop at trying to identify characteristics of the organism; Burkkholder's biggest obstacle was trying to gain support for research from her peers, concerned citizens, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Management. Eventually, fellow colleagues would believe her claim but the government only saw Burkholder as an annoyance needed to be silenced. At the same time, Pfiesteria was reeking havoc with numerous fish kills and reports of human symptoms including short-term memory loss and severe mood swings.

This was a book that I just could not put down for the life of me. I had a test a school but instead of studying, I read this book. Shocking!!!!

A compelling book that portrays the gauntlet of bureaucracy that Dr. JoAnn Burkholder had to ordeal when she discovered something in the waters off of the Eastern Seaboard. The leaders of N.C.'s DEM, and the DEHNR showed their obvious distaste for her and her work when this information proved to be threatening "the machine" of business as usual.

What's most shocking about the whole things is 1. The lengths that the health department officials will go to cover this up, and truly not deal with an obvious health crisis; and 2. THIS IS A TRUE STORY that is still unfolding today off the East Coast.

Well written and with courage. 5 - stars!

"Get into the fight before it's too late"

Here's the book I've been waiting for, about pfiesteria piscicida (feast-eer-ee-ah pis-ki-seed-ah), the microscopic animal that is terrorizing the waters up and down the east coast of the U.S. (and perhaps coming soon to a waterway near you).

The main focus of the book is top researcher JoAnn Burkholder, and her struggle to get beyond the politics and bureaucracy of various agencies in North Carolina, in order to obtain funding to continue her research on the organism. The increased water pollution in recent years, in the form of livestock-manure runoff, and dumpings from industry, have created an environment that favors the flourishing of pfiesteria. It has at least 24 stages of life cycle, remaining in a dormant cyst stage until it senses the presence of fish. Then it comes to life, zapping the fish with a kind of neurotoxin and then eating holes in the fish. Humans who come into contact with water in which pfiesteria (in its toxic stage) is present, often suffer skin lesions that won't heal, memory loss, and disorientation. Chronic exposure can lead to personality changes and loss of cognitive function that emulates brain damage, which is what happened to lab worker Howard Glasgow, whose story is discussed in detail in this book.

It is a tale that seems familiar: a strong-willed scientist makes a major discovery about what is killing fish in North Carolina's waterways. Then she has to deal with greedy and jealous scientists who wish they had been the ones to make the discovery, and who try to ruin her career. Then she must face the media attention, and finds herself becoming an advocate for the citizens, who simply want to know if that thing that is harming the fish can harm humans too. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to say YES. But the stuffed shirts in the government agencies don't want to hear it: swayed by money, rather than truth and justice, it's business as usual. Then there is the classic conflict between jobs vs. environment. When fishermen are getting too sick to function, an! d all the fish are dead, anybody with a brain would choose "environment" over "job". Wouldn't they?

Next time I'm near a body of water where dead fish covered with bloody lesions are floating, I plan to run fast in the opposite direction.

Barker's AND THE WATERS TURNED TO BLOOD is a whooping good, well-told true story of thoughtful, good-natured people being screwed by egomanical, backside-covering bureaucrats and scientists who certain reviewers on-line would rather believe aren't really such bad guys. I, for one, am wholly convinced by Barker's careful investigation and analysis and am wholly sympathetic to the obvious Good Guys in this book.

To what degree were everyday Germans responsible for the Nazi Holocaust? Similarly, to what degree are the recalcitrant American media responsible for not covering wildly important stories such as the Pfiesteria plague, wholly preventable if greedy industries were forced to comply with precepts of human decency by being fined heavily for polluting? (Only a self-interested beaureacratic bimbo would deny the link between industrial pollution and the explosion of Pfiesteria blooms.)

Last week the Chesapeake Bay area was decimated by fishkills and Pfiesteria. Next week it will be some place else. Meanwhile, the media largely ignores the topic to avoid "mass hysteria" and to keep the profits flowing. To what degree are you, dear reader, responsible for not learning more about Pfiesteria by reading this book and then by making some irate phone calls and writing some irate letters because you'd enjoy a healthy America for future generations?

Our greatest living novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, suggests in an essay that carved on a Grand Canyon wall in great big letters for the flying-saucer people who arrive in a hundred years and find a dead planet with no people should be these messages: "WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD. AND TOO DAMNED CHEAP." Rodney Barker's superlative book certainly supports this idea.

Richard Rhodes' DEADLY FEASTS, about the American Med-Cow disease cover-up, also supports Vonnegut's idea: we are too lazy and cheap to save ourselves

Who says truth isn't stranger than fiction? Rodney Barker's book "And the Waters Turned to Blood" reads as good or better than any scientific-politico thriller I have ever encountered! It has the heroines and heroes, the villains and buffoons, the suspense and emotional tension, everything to make a good story. Yet, this is no work of fiction, it is a true testimonial to a rare form of tenacity, a commitment to scientific integrity unusual in this day of fraudulent scientific and medical practices. It is the true story of JoAnn Burkholder, Ph.D., a bright young woman, part Cherokee, and freshly appointed assistant professor of aquatic biology at North Carolina State, Raleigh, North Carolina, plowing her way into a male dominated profession. While dinoflagellates had been part of her general algal studies in college, not a great deal was generally known about them, and calls from the Department of Veterinary Medicine to assist in identifying what was killing off the aquarium fish was not exactly her cup of tea. Her very survival depended upon the writing of successful grant proposals in her own field and these calls to do animal studies were intruding greatly upon her time, patience, and commitment elsewhere. But fate prevailed and JoAnn Burkholder was launched into a program that changed her life. With the identification of Pfiesteria piscicida as the destructive killer dinoflagellate, the "cell from hell" firmly established along with observation of up 24 different life-cycle stages, surviving in salt and fresh water alike, unicellular animal replete with cyst, flagellated swimmer, flesh eating peduncle, and killer amoebic stages, JoAnn Burkholder rapidly became the expert capable of solving the Pamlico Sound fish kill mystery as well. The fact that this little killer was also the generator of some of the most potent neurotoxins known to man, and did indeed induce serious human symptoms in the local fishermen, only heightens the severity and tension in our tale. The story of her fight to bring regulatory sanity to the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources in an atmosphere of professional jealously, parochial self-interest, bureaucratic inertia, and outright fraud makes this a real thriller for all. Can JoAnn Burkholder hold up her end against the system, can she succeed where countless vested interests with vast financial and influential resources have forged a system subservient to their own interest or at best simply torpid to the public need? This is a read which is hard to put down, informative, thrilling, angering, and inciteful to action.

An amazing story of scientific discovery at its best. The complexities of research in epidemiology has never been written about so well. It is a thriller wrapped in deceit and attempts at keeping the public non-informed, there are sharks all around and few know of their existence.

The authors take the reader on a journey of discovery that they will not forget. Read this and think about what else may be effecting our environment and, ultimately, our health.

Rodney Barker's And the Waters Turned to Blood is a scientific mystery and political thriller. It is a non-fiction account of the events surrounding the discovery of Pfiesteria piscicida, "the cell from hell", in the estuaries (inlets of sea reaching into rivers) of North Carolina.

The first two-thirds of the book constitutes the scientific mystery. It begins with unexplained fish kills in the tanks of North Carolina State veterinary school. Unable to solve the mystery themselves, the fish biologist called on a young North Carolina State aquatic botany professor, Dr. JoAnn Burkholder. Eventually she and her assistants make an amazing discovery of a new and extremely dangerous organism. I found this portion of the book to be very engaging and exciting. I had a hard time putting it down until the mystery was solved. In addition to the mystery, the reader receives a crash course in the world of college politics.

Approximately the final third of And the Waters Turned to Blood examines the political controversy surrounding the environmental protection of North Carolina's waterways. Because of her fame after the discovery of "the cell from hell", Dr. Burkholder joined several of the state's water committees. This portion of the book details her fight for recognition of environmental problems and her fight for funding to study Pfiesteria piscicida. I found this section less interesting than the first, simply because I am not as interested in politics as I am in scientific research.

Still overall, I found the book to be very interesting and educational. It will definitely make anyone think about what we are doing to our environment and what our environment might be doing to fight back. I recommend this book to anyone interested in biological research or the environment.

While I do not have any dog in this fight, I think some people should dig around a bit more before jumping to conclusions. Everyone has an agenda, in the end. According to the reprint date on the cover, it has been over three years since the book was reprinted, amid a flurry of speculation and brazen (and often shoddy) reporting by agenda and deadline driven journalists about the "threat" of Phisteria. Barker and Berkholder were followed by the Raleigh News and Observer, who took the bait and started crying foul to the State and to NCDEHNR. The heat lasted a little while, but eventually subsided. And now, let's take a look at what happened. The epidemic that was predicted has not surfaced. The deaths in question, although tragic, have not been directly and conclusively linked to Phisteria. And the coverup that the N&O among others sought out, didn't materialize. And Barker and Berkholder dissappeared from the media limelight, with allegations of fraudulent research methods and shady personal affiliations (Berkholder's dealings with a research assistant, among one). And while the storm seems to have passed, a lot of the accusations that were leveled were never retracted or withdrawn. This book stinks of blatant manipulation, sensationalism and exploitation of other's suffering for a bit of the limelight. The real story is out there, but I'm afraid it's just not as much of a page turner as Barker and Berkholder had hoped.

Picked this book up while at the pubic library with my family. The except about an "ancient life form" peaked my interest and I had to borrow it. It reads like a very practical novel with a roller coaster ride of excitement about Dr. Burkholder's discovery of this toxic ameoba. I was truly fascinated and couldn't put the book down. The science is broken down so that a lay person can grasp it and understand the importance of JoAnn's findings. Her trials and tribulations with back stabbing colleagues, NC bureacrats, and the dinoflagelate itelf are very interesting. Would highly recommend this book to anyone.

I live in North Carolina and this is very scary. People are not being told about this very real danger that can do real damage to a persons health just from going in the water.

The fact that I still haven't heard anything about this in the news just makes it worse.

This is scary but the fact that our goverment keeps this type of information from us is even worse.

When you come to N.C., remember there is a monster in the water and it is as bad or worse then the shark in Jaws. Maybe it's time for the movie version. At least an update on the subject.