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athenany's review
4.0
This is a fascinating story of a real medical mystery and how it was identified (if not yet solved.) I would love a follow-up at some point.
alicebv1995's review against another edition
4.0
Really interesting read
Really interesting read. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. You might want to keep a note with what all the abbreviations are though as you read. He uses a lot of abbreviations and a lot of them are really similar so it was hard to remember what they all stood for.
Really interesting read. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. You might want to keep a note with what all the abbreviations are though as you read. He uses a lot of abbreviations and a lot of them are really similar so it was hard to remember what they all stood for.
marianneiriss's review
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Terminal illness and Medical content
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Pedophilia, Dementia, Cannibalism, and Death of parent
alissamargaret's review against another edition
4.0
*Audiobook* Really interesting. Prion diseases are pretty terrifying. This book goes into the history of Prion diseases and discusses how the research and researchers behind them. While the book title would make you think that it focuses solely on FFI, it covers others as well (such as “mad cow”). I would have liked a little more information about the family with FFI.
simlish's review
3.0
A book about prion diseases. It came out long enough ago that I wonder if there's been any advances, but prion research takes so long that I kind of doubt it. It was okay -- it took me about thirty pages to get hooked, but once I was past that, it was readable enough. I was in middle school when the mad cow outbreak happened, so it was something I was vaguely aware of, and it was very interesting to get more detail about both that specific exchange, and prion diseases in general.
What I found most interesting was the discovery of a matching genetic base pair that makes people more vulnerable to prion diseases, and the supposition that prion diseases caused the taboo against cannibalism, since cannibalism is the easiest way to get them and that matching base pair became a lot rarer after a big historic bottleneck.
I don't feel that I really grasped that much about prions, but I also got the impression that no one really does, so. At least I'm in good company.
What I found most interesting was the discovery of a matching genetic base pair that makes people more vulnerable to prion diseases, and the supposition that prion diseases caused the taboo against cannibalism, since cannibalism is the easiest way to get them and that matching base pair became a lot rarer after a big historic bottleneck.
I don't feel that I really grasped that much about prions, but I also got the impression that no one really does, so. At least I'm in good company.
dajna's review against another edition
4.0
Starting in the Veneto of 1700, D. T. Max takes us through the history of prion diseases. And it's an awful ride, let me tell you.
I lived through the Mad Cow epidemic of the '90s, and I knew about Kuru, but my interest sparked when I saw a video on YouTube about the italian family cursed by the fatal familial insomnia. These defective proteins are scary AF, and a terrible death sentence.
Every time I read something like this I stop to reflect how complex and fragile we humans are. What we consider a normal life is actually one of the biggest lottery winnings we could hope for.
I lived through the Mad Cow epidemic of the '90s, and I knew about Kuru, but my interest sparked when I saw a video on YouTube about the italian family cursed by the fatal familial insomnia. These defective proteins are scary AF, and a terrible death sentence.
Every time I read something like this I stop to reflect how complex and fragile we humans are. What we consider a normal life is actually one of the biggest lottery winnings we could hope for.
yetilibrary's review
2.0
I learned a lot about prion diseases from this book, but it suffers from some major issues:
1. It is poorly organized. The chapters alternate between telling the story of the "family that couldn't sleep"--an Italian family suffering from Fatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI--and covering the history of prion diseases & research. That would be fine on its own if there was still some kind of timeline holding everything together, but there isn't: one chapter will discuss prion research from 1970-2004, and then the next chapter will return to research in 1980 (and then to a disease not mentioned for 5 chapters), and so forth. It was impossible to get my bearings in this book. Furthermore, at no point does DT Max set aside time to go through a simple explanation of prions, prion diseases, and some of their basic differences: all these facts appear willy-nilly, buried in the text, without a glossary for assistance. Some terms aren't made clear until near the end.
Also, the Italian family with FFI is discussed at length, and my copy of the book does not have a family tree. With this many relatives and a heritable disease involved, a family tree is a necessity.
2. Lack of scientific rigor. The last few chapters inexplicably step away from science and turn to online message boards (no, REALLY, message boards) and amateur speculations. The book is subtitled "A Medical Mystery," not "A Medical Mystery plus stuff I read from these people online oh and I wonder about vaccines sometimes."
3. One of the key researchers of prion disease--and a Nobel winner, to boot--is a pedophile. An unrepentant one, at that. Max, to his credit, does not sweep this under the rug, but his attempts to be serious-but-not-TOO-serious fall flat. It's gross.
In sum: I did, as I noted, learn from this book, but it has serious issues (WHITHER THE EDITOR? WHITHER?) and that prevents me from giving it any more than the "it was okay" two stars. If you're not highly science-literate AND very interested in the topic, just skip this one.
1. It is poorly organized. The chapters alternate between telling the story of the "family that couldn't sleep"--an Italian family suffering from Fatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI--and covering the history of prion diseases & research. That would be fine on its own if there was still some kind of timeline holding everything together, but there isn't: one chapter will discuss prion research from 1970-2004, and then the next chapter will return to research in 1980 (and then to a disease not mentioned for 5 chapters), and so forth. It was impossible to get my bearings in this book. Furthermore, at no point does DT Max set aside time to go through a simple explanation of prions, prion diseases, and some of their basic differences: all these facts appear willy-nilly, buried in the text, without a glossary for assistance. Some terms aren't made clear until near the end.
Also, the Italian family with FFI is discussed at length, and my copy of the book does not have a family tree. With this many relatives and a heritable disease involved, a family tree is a necessity.
2. Lack of scientific rigor. The last few chapters inexplicably step away from science and turn to online message boards (no, REALLY, message boards) and amateur speculations. The book is subtitled "A Medical Mystery," not "A Medical Mystery plus stuff I read from these people online oh and I wonder about vaccines sometimes."
3. One of the key researchers of prion disease--and a Nobel winner, to boot--is a pedophile. An unrepentant one, at that. Max, to his credit, does not sweep this under the rug, but his attempts to be serious-but-not-TOO-serious fall flat. It's gross.
In sum: I did, as I noted, learn from this book, but it has serious issues (WHITHER THE EDITOR? WHITHER?) and that prevents me from giving it any more than the "it was okay" two stars. If you're not highly science-literate AND very interested in the topic, just skip this one.