What you need to know about deadly diseases of the twenty-first century
Just half a century ago, Alexander Fleming's new wonder drug, penicillin, was destined to relegate many diseases to history. Since that breakthrough, antibiotics have been prescribed with abandon, often against wholly inappropriate forms of infection and with little thought given to the possible consequences. However, microbes and bacteria evolve many thousands of times faster than we do and resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria have emerged. We are now faced with the prospect of returning to the pre-antibiotic era.
In addition, new and mutant strains of virus threaten our very existence on this planet. Deaths from the MRSA virus, resistant to most antibiotics, are rising on a yearly basis and the prospect of an airborne equivalent of AIDS emerging in heavily populated areas of the globe is a truly apocalyptic scenario that could happen tomorrow. The book examines the diseases that now threaten us, from SARS to Avian flu and TB, and the extent to which the present situation is of our own making. Chapters are included on the history of antibiotics, their development and proliferation around the world and the consequences of overuse that are only now becoming clearly understood.
Written by a respected science and medical writer, 'The New Killer Germs' is a must-have guide to understanding the diseases of the twenty-first century, and what we can do to prevent microbial Armageddon.
