The Perfect Predator - A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug

A "fascinating and terrifying" memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life (Scientific American) -- and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more.

Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.

Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure.

A nail-biting medical mystery, The Perfect Predator is a story of love and survival against all odds, and the (re)discovery of a powerful new weapon in the global superbug crisis.

Info autore

Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist, and Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and Professor and Harold Simon Chair at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. She also directs the new UC San Diego center for Innovative Phage Application and Therapeutics and is an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins and Simon Fraser Universities. She has been named one of Time's 50 Most Influential People in Health Care.

Thomas Patterson is an evolutionary sociobiologist and an experimental psychologist. A Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, he has renowned expertise on behavioral interventions among HIV-positive persons and those at high risk of acquiring HIV and sexually transmitted infections.

Dr. Patterson and Dr. Strathdee have worked as husband-and-wife AIDS researchers on the Mexico-US border for over a decade. The Perfect Predator is their first book together.

Riassunto

A bracing medical-mystery memoir in the vein of Brain on Fire, The Perfect Predator tells the story of epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee's fight to save her husband's life

Prefazione

A bracing medical-mystery memoir in the vein of Brain on Fire, The Perfect Predator tells the story of epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee's fight to save her husband's life

Dettagli sul prodotto

Autori	Teresa Barker, et al, Thomas Patterson, Steffanie Strathdee
Editore	Little Brown USA
Lingue	Inglese
Formato	Copertina rigida
Pubblicazione	31.07.2019
EAN	9780316418089
ISBN	978-0-316-41808-9
Dimensioni	160 mm x 235 mm x 30 mm
Categorie	Narrativa > Romanzi > Epistole, diari; Scienze naturali, medicina, informatica, tecnica > Biologia > Tematiche generali, enciclopedie

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Teresa Barker, et al, Thomas Patterson, Steffanie Strathdee
• Editore: Little Brown USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 31.07.2019
• EAN: 9780316418089
• ISBN: 978-0-316-41808-9
• Dimensioni: 160 mm x 235 mm x 30 mm
• Categorie: Narrativa > Romanzi > Epistole, diari; Scienze naturali, medicina, informatica, tecnica > Biologia > Tematiche generali, enciclopedie