Where the Germs Are

Nicholas Bakalar

Description

A guided tour through the strange and sometimes dangerous microscopic world
Germs are everywhere--in our intestines and on our skin as well as on kitchen counters, public toilets, doorknobs, and just about everything else. Why are there so many microorganisms? Which ones are dangerous? And how can we avoid the ones that will make us sick? This entertaining and informative book provides the answers. Profiling a rogue's gallery of harmful germs--from the influenza virus, salmonella, and herpes to hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV--as well as helpful microbes (we actually need E. Coli and other bacteria for proper digestion), the book reveals how different germs interact with the human body and what happens when they do.
Nicholas Bakalar (New York, NY) is the author or coauthor of ten books, including Hepatitis A to G and Wiping Out Head Lice.
Preface.

Acknowledgments.

1. Microbes: An Introduction.

2. Hungry? Let's Eat: The Contaminated Kitchen.

3. Toilet Training: Washing Hands Is the Best Revenge.

4. Whiter Whites and Brighter Colors: Healthy Laundry.

5. Clean Up That Room: Kids and Microbes.

6. What Love's Got to Do with It: Microbes and Your Sex Life.

7. Wild Kingdom: Pets and Their Germs.

8. Up Your Nose: The Flu and the Cold.

9. Bottled or Tap: Water, and What's in It.

10. Fresh Air and Sunshine: Outdoor Fun with Microbes.

11. Paint the Town Red: Germs in Public Places.

12. The Antiseptic Supermarket: Products That Do Something, Products That Do Nothing, and Products That Actually Do Harm.

Glossary.

Notes.

Index.

Sujets

• Médecine
• Médecine de laboratoire
• Life Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Microbiology
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 17 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470252444
• Langue: English

Extrait

Where the Germs Are
A S CIENTIFIC S AFARI
Nicholas Bakalar
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2003 by Nicholas Bakalar. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
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For John F. Thornton
Contents




Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Microbes: An Introduction
2 Hungry? Let s Eat: The Contaminated Kitchen
3 Toilet Training: Washing Hands Is the Best Revenge
4 Whiter Whites and Brighter Colors: Healthy Laundry
5 Clean Up That Room: Kids and Microbes
6 What Love s Got to Do with It: Microbes and Your Sex Life
7 Wild Kingdom: Pets and Their Germs
8 Up Your Nose: The Flu and the Cold
9 Bottled or Tap: Water, and What s in It
10 Fresh Air and Sunshine: Outdoor Fun with Microbes
11 Paint the Town Red: Germs in Public Places
12 The Antiseptic Supermarket: Products That Do Something, Products That Do Nothing, and Products That Actually Do Harm
Glossary
Notes
Index
Preface




Dirty! Don t touch! Yuck! Feh! You don t know where it s been! These admonitions ring in our ears, for some of us our earliest memories of parental exhortation, for others the indelible mark of our deepest fears. Germs, as we know, are everywhere, lying in wait to attack the inadequately vigilant or insufficiently armed, gangs of serial killers on a random search for their next victim. We do not mock. Well, maybe we mock a little, but in fact, Mother (or Father) does sometimes know best-some germs can be very nasty invaders indeed. Yet we live in a world of microbes, some dreadful, some harmless, some essential to our continued life on earth. Knowing which to avoid, which to eliminate, and which just to live with happily can turn fearful warnings into reasoned discourse and trembling terror into intelligent action. Reassuring? Perhaps. But be warned: there are things out there you re not afraid of that you really should fear, and we will not shrink from pointing them out. Germs, in fact, are almost everywhere you thought they were, and in a lot of places you thought they weren t. This book is a Baedeker for a microscopic country, the land of the most common microbes we encounter in everyday life. It reveals what microbiologists have learned about these creatures (or at least some of what they ve learned), and shows the reader how to make his way in a world that is, no matter what we do or how we act, completely infested with invisible beings.
Acknowledgments




I would like to thank the following people for valuable help, suggestions, and advice: James Bakalar, J.D., Kenneth Bakalar, Alan Berkman, M.D., Francine Cournos, M.D., Donald Aislee Henderson, M.D., and Jerry Walsky, Pharm. D. Marguerite Mayers, M.D., read the manuscript with great care, saving me from myself on several occasions and making many suggestions for improvement, every one of which has been incorporated into the text. Isela Puello helped immensely in tracking down references. Wiley s Jeff Golick is a sharp-eyed young editor of the old school, who, I have learned to my delight, brooks no nonsense, syntactic or otherwise. This book would not exist without the ministrations, from its initial idea to its publication, of John F. Thornton, gentleman and gentle scholar, who has honored me with his friendship for more than a quarter of a century.
1
Microbes
A N I NTRODUCTION




There was a time, a little more than a hundred years ago, when people didn t believe in germs. Nineteenth-century doctors knew a lot about disease-they could diagnose your illness correctly and tell you quite accurately how much time would pass before you would either get better or drop dead. But because knowledge of the causes of illness was primitive and knowledge of germs was nonexistent, doctors at the time couldn t do much to cure disease or affect its course. Then, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it became clear that microscopic or invisible organisms caused disease-we ve all heard about Louis Pasteur and the other pioneers of microbiology-and that you could prevent disease if you could somehow eliminate the organism that caused it. Remove the handle from the pump in the public square, and you get cholera under control. Heat up the milk to a certain temperature before you drink it, and you can kill the organisms in it that cause illness.
In 1900, the three leading causes of death in the United States were all infectious illnesses: pneumonia, tuberculosis, and enteritis. Along with diphtheria (the tenth most common cause), these diseases caused more than one-third of all deaths. Of these deaths, 40 percent were children under five years old. In 1997, infectious disease accounted for only 4.5 percent of deaths in the United States. The two leading causes of death in 1997 were heart disease and cancer, accounting for more than half of all deaths. Stroke and chronic lung disease were the third- and fourth-ranked killers.
You might conclude from these promising statistics that infectious disease has been gradually conquered by human ingenuity, but you would be only partly right. In fact, in the midst of this hundred-year record of increasing control of infection occurred the worst infectious outbreak in history: the influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed 20 million people worldwide and 500,000 in the United States in the course of less than one year. This is more people than have ever died in so short a period in any war, famine, or natural disaster in the history of the world. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, first recognized in 1981, now affects 33 million people worldwide and has caused an estimated 13.9 million deaths. Infectious disease, in other words, is always a lurking threat, however great our scientific progress in battling it. *
The effectiveness of antibiotics against bacteria and of vaccines against scourges such as smallpox, polio, measles, and influenza is well-known. And of course these medicines have been immensely powerful, sometimes seemingly miraculous, in curing illness and preventing its spread. But it is less widely known that most of the progress against infectious disease in the United States in the twentieth century was realized before there were any effective antimicrobial drugs at all. Nineteenth-century industrialization caused the U.S. population to shift from rural areas to cities. The result was overcrowding, poor housing, inadequate water supply, and poor waste disposal, which led to vast increases in infectious illness-particularly tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and malaria. But by 1900, the incidence of many of these diseases had begun to decline as local, state, and federal governments instituted vast improvements in water supply, sewage facilities, pest control, food safety, and public education. All but five of the 45 states had established public health departments by the turn of the twentieth century. The idea of public health as a governmental responsibility had taken hold, and its success was spectacular. In 1900, 194 out of every 100,000 Americans died of tuberculosis. By 1940 the rate had dropped by more than 75 percent to 46 per 100,000. Malaria had been reduced to insignificant levels thanks to mosquito-control programs. Rat-control measures had made plague all but disappear. Chlorination, begun in the early 1900s, had vastly reduced the incidence of waterborne diseases such as dysentery and cholera. And all this had been accomplished without the use of any effective antimicrobial medicines, because there were none.
* There has been a lot of press about the vast increases in infectious disease over the last decade, but the statistics cited (e.g., a startling report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that between 1980 and 1992 the rate of death from infectious disease had increased 58 percent) need some explication. First, thos