Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weaponsby Kris Newby
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  RachelRachelRachel | Nov 21, 2023 |   The story unraveled within these pages is jarring and disturbing, but for those of us living with this disease, it's not surprising. The CDC has persistently and defiantly refused to acknowledge this epidemic, despite the very real data proving its existence. When a government agency is working harder to ignore an epidemic than to understand it, that speaks volumes about its complicity. From an objective standpoint, the history here is fascinating. Newby doesn't address only Lyme disease. She exposes the history of many tickborne illnesses, the drive toward biological warfare, and the accidents, secrecy, and terrible judgment along the way. This book is exceptionally well researched and well written. If I thought my doctors would bother to read it, I'd buy them each a copy. (  ) Darcia | Jul 2, 2019 | no reviews | add a review
"This true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time--Lyme disease--and of Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today. While on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Kris Newby was bitten by an unseen tick. That one bite changed her life forever, pulling her into the abyss of a devastating illness that took ten doctors to diagnose and years to recover: Newby had become one of the 300,000 Americans who are afflicted with Lyme disease each year. As a science writer, she was driven to understand why this disease is so misunderstood, and its patients so mistreated. This quest led her to Willy Burgdorfer, the Lyme microbe's discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War, and believed that the Lyme epidemic was started by a military experiment gone wrong. In a superb, meticulous work of narrative journalism, Bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy. It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease. A gripping, infectious page-turner, Bitten will shed a terrifying new light on an epidemic that is exacting an incalculable toll on us, upending much of what we believe we know about it"-- No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers  
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)616.9246Technology Medicine and health Diseases Other diseases Other fevers; General works on feversLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.44)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
1
"There's no such thing as a clean tick." -Willy Burgdorfer, as quoted on p 165
This book has a fascinating premise - author Newby suggests that the Lyme disease epidemic began with a military bioweapons experiment gone wrong.
The book was a very quick and easy read - unfortunately, I didn't learn very much. Even though Newby includes plenty of science, the book still felt very "fluffy" to me - there really weren't any definitive conclusions, just a lot of speculation and questions. Despite the subtitle, she seemed to spend more time talking about rickettsias than borrelia, the microbe that is believed to cause Lyme disease. Also, though not surprising at all, it made me sigh to read that she accepts the evolutionary theory as fact.
It was interesting, for the most part, but not nearly as "complete" as I was hoping for.
"[Lyme disease] was the first major new disease discovered after the Bayh-Dole Act and the Diamond v. Chakrabarty Supreme Court decision made it possible for the NIH, the CDC, and universities to patent and profit from 'ownership' of live organisms... All of a sudden, the institutions that were supposed to be protectors of public health became business partners with Big Pharma." pp 229-230
"My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA [Infectious Diseases Society of America] panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science." -Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal (now a senator), in a 2008 antitrust settlement press release, as quoted on p 121 (