D.T. Max

A fascinating historical and medical perspective on fatal familial insomnia and prion disorders in general, highlighting historical and modern controversies on these fascinating diseases. Max's strength lies in characterization and the placement of the events occurring in one family with FFI within a historical context. His prose is rich and readable. The subject matter is unspeakably sad, but Max handles a book about rapid neurodegeneration with ease, focusing on the excitement of discovery, the hopes of family and the scientific and medical curiosity evoked by the strange mysteries of prion disorders.

The major flaw is that by attempting to focus on prion disorders in general, what Max covers in breadth often lacks in depth. The discussion of kuru seems to focus on one of the main researcher's pedophilia to a large extent, which seems to occur in place of a real examination of the husband and wife team that did the anthropological work to discover the true origins of the disease. It would be both more salient and more interesting to focus instead on the controversies of cannibalism and how that discovery was made. In addition, Max remarks several times on the similarity between scrapie and FFI to the already discovered hereditary prion disorders CJD and GSS, without ever really discussing the discovery of those conditions. Since one of the stated goals of the book is to bring about public awareness and support for research to inherited prion disorders, more exploration of these two diseases would have added a lot, in addition to enriching the history of the field.… (mais)

A friend has been reminding me to distinguish between an interesting topic and a topic I'd actually want to read a full-length book about. When I first heard of FFI I was fascinated, but honestly I'm not sure what 250 pages just on that would look like - probably science I wouldn't quite understand. Luckily this particular book covers more than FFI, giving a history of research into prions and prion disease research, with forays into kuru (always memorable if you've studied anthropology or traveled the south pacific) and scrapie. It was additionally interesting to read about mad cow, because I remember it, but wasn't at an age where I read the news closely, nevermind scientific papers. Overall very readable and interesting, despite the rather accepting treatment of Gajdusek.… (mais)