Rating: 
Summary: deadly bore
Review: in general, poorly written(reads like a first draft), but the first few chapters held my attention. i thought that it was a good and easy to read exposition of a serious biological/medical/envirnmental/public health/public policy issue, but as i read on i began to lose confidence in the accuracy/value/significance of what i was reading. the author progressively added more and more of his own opinion to the facts, often without making the distinction. i'm interested in reality, not the author's personal politics.too much idolization of Gladjusek(except he writes that Gladjusek is a pedaphile, after which he dismisses it as not being significant[so why mention it at all]) and too much villification of Prusiner. these flaws made me begin to question the accuracy/value/significance of everything that he posits as fact. this books starts out reading like the Scientific American and ends up reading like the National Enquirer.i'd love to own the movie rights.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly engrossing book.
Review: In the style of Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone," Rhodes takes the reader into the jungles where kuru is breaking out and to the cities and countrysides of England which have been stricken by BSE and CJD. Readers are also introduced to the newest pathogen known to man, prions, a hitherto unheard of particle. If you've read "The Hot Zone" then you have to follow up with "Deadly Feasts."
Rating: 
Summary: good if you want to puke
Review: ok, so the book made me feel sick to my stomac. The only reason why I kept reading was because I had to. Its awful how Rhodes gets into expliced details. i dont need to hear that. If you think reading text books is a fun thing to do, you will love it. So have a life. This is one book that you can miss.
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Summary: Readable insight into the ¿mad cow disease¿scare
Review: Rhodes has a talent for moving the narrative and imparting information in a readable fashion. The new plague is "mad cow disease" which includes various transmissible spongiform encephalopathic diseases most notably kuru from New Guinea, a disease of the brain of not clear cause spread by eating human brains, which the women and children of a New Guinea tribe did ritualistically until sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. The men did not partake. This strange set of diseases produces holes in brain cells and inevitably leads to death, but it is apparently caused by a protein that is just a little off from what it should be. There is apparently no virus, etc., just a kind of copying error that is replicated once it starts. It is transmitted by eating animal tissue, especially brain tissue that has miss-replicated. It is scary and ugly and makes me not want to eat meat. The mad cow disease in Europe from U.K. beef was the result of cattle being fed feed that contained animal parts, in particular animal brains. Pass the asparagus, please.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: Rhodes is a gripping author that had me devouring this book. The technical scientific information was presented in an interesting and understandable way.
I'm surprised this book hasn't made the best seller list! Everybody should read it for the information which is so relevant to our society NOW
Rating:
Summary: This reality is much more frightening than fiction...
Review: Rhodes paints a spectacular diaspora of Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathies, going from Carlton Gadjusek's work with the Foré tribe in New Guinea, to Stanley Prusiner's nobel-laureate work discovering the mechanism by which these diseases work: prions. While I get the feeling that Gadjusek (rightly) believes that an earlier researcher (whose name conveniently eludes me)and her work with SAFs, or Scrapie-Associated Fibrils, deserves mention with Prusiner, Prusiner is the one who pushed for the infectious protein model for nearly 15 years before receiving a Nobel Laureate for his work (1997). In all, Rhodes does a wonderful job in telling a tale far too scary to be merely a cheap paperback thriller or sci-fi movie, and he does so in a way that neither scientists nor our non-whitecoat peers feel isolated from the details or the grand picture.
Rating:
Summary: Scarier than Stephan King, and true
Review: Rhodes tracks the entire history of TSEs (transmissable spongiform encephalopathies) through the researchers who studied and solved many of their puzzles. The outcome is accessible science, a clever mystery, international muckraking, and a warning. Everyone now knows of the political decisions which helped the spread of AIDs, particularly the failure to protect the blood supply in America and France. It shouldn't be surprising then, to learn how footdragging contributed to cases of TSEs in America and Britain. Perhaps the most upsetting news for readers isn't that the TSEs are easily spread and 100% fatal--it's knowing that all the medical breakthroughs won't save us if no one will act on the knowledge
Rating: 
Summary: In the shadow of the Hot Zone
Review: Richard Preston did not create the disease thriller genre with"The Hot Zone," but that book ignited interest in reading true,but thriller-novel-like stories about bizarre illnesses... Since "The Hot Zone," disease thriller novels have spread like the flu, while true stories like Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague" have benefited from the booster-shot of attention lavished on "The Hot Zone." The problem with the novels is that, because they are fiction, they simply are not as scary as a true story. The problem with the true stories is that few have been written out with the unfolding drama of novels (although Garrett's book is worthwhile on its own standards). "Deadly Feasts" attempts to re-create what Preston achieved. Richard Rhodes, who tells science related stories, such as those of the inventions of the atom and hydrogen bombs, turns his skills to the story of "prions." Prions cause - we think - Mad Cow disease and incurable human brain diseases. They aren't quite viruses, they aren't quite poisons. Part of what's scary about the story is that we don't really know what they are, where they are, or how they are transmitted. But prions are not ebola. The ebola virus gave "The Hot Zone" many a revolting (described in nauseating detail) highly contagious death. Death by prion is about as disgusting as death by Alzheimer's. Sad, yes, but not inherently disgusting. Nor do prions seem to be contagious like ebola. Rhodes, then, doesn't have the raw material that Preston did. So, to enhance the icky factor, Rhodes links prion-diseases to cannibalism, describes exactly what happens to prion-infected brains, and even manages to turn scientific tests into opportunities to reveal what happens to the tissues being examined. Preston's story is a journey into and out of mysterious Africa. Rhodes, whose disease is most popularly associated with ho-hum England, manages to find flesh-eating New Guinea natives. Preston's heroes are globe-trotting virus hunters, Rhodes has globe-trotting academic researchers. All this is enough to make "Deadly Feasts" interesting, and even suspenseful in parts. But it doesn't work as well. In the end, the disease itself is not quite as revolting as ebola. The heroes of the story are not quite as dramatic (indeed, the apparent arrested of one of them for child molestation damages his protagonist-potential). "Deadly Feasts" never quite escapes the shadow of "The Hot Zone." Rhodes doesn't even try. He prefaces the book by trying to explain why prions are scarier than ebola. The book-jacket compares the book to "The Hot Zone," and Preston provides a peer review on the back cover (at least of my edition). Still, "Deadly Feasts" manages to be engaging and even a little disturbing. If you like the genre, "Deadly Feasts" makes for a good snack.
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Summary: A Great Writer of Non-Fiction
Review: Richard Rhodes is without a doubt one of the most talented writers of nonfiction today. Time after time he has impressed me with his interesting and readable accounts of subjects ranging from The Making of the Atomic Bomb to Why They Kill. In Deadly Feasts, Rhodes has once again written a wonderful book. In the late 1990's there was a slew of books published on the subject of disease and the possibilities of biological warfare thanks in no small part to Richard Preston's magnificent The Hot Zone. In The Hot Zone Preston writes with an almost fictional intensity about a class of viruses that kill in a quick and horrifying fashion. It was The Hot Zone that brought Ebola to the public consciousness. Rhodes' book, too, is about killer illnesses but of a different type. The Hot Zone presents us with what are, despite their horribleness, rather exotic diseases. Deadly Feasts presents us relentlessly fatal diseases that might very well already be infiltrating our Western population through that most dangerous source--our food supply. Rhodes' book presents the links between a disease called kuru which was passed through the women and children in aboriginal tribes in New Guinea and a rare disease that Westerners may be picking up through, you guessed it, the so-called "mad-cow disease." Kuru was transferred by human cannibalism and the disease was eliminated by stopping this practice. Mad-cow disease is passed by the "cannibalism" of cows by humans. Preston's book is highly intense because of the visible horror of the symptoms he describes and the speed with which victims are overcome. Rhodes' book has an intensity that builds as he describes the progression of diseases that may need decades to incubate in humans before they show symptoms that will whittle them down over the course of months to fatality. The horror that Rhodes describes is of diseases which are 100% fatal that some of us here in the West may have already contracted but will not see signs of for many years. And we have contracted it through eating tainted meat. But Rhodes' book is about more than the horror of disease and the dangers of our food supply. Deadly Feasts is about real science. Not the science that scientists and historians like to present to us that lull people into thinking science is a perfect, logical progression. Rhodes shows us science for what it is: investigation and guesswork, supported by experiment and influenced by politics and the personalities of scientists. Mistakes are made as well as reputations. Egos play a role. Wild ideas make their way into fact and, at this point, still no one knows whether these diseases are caused by something virus-like or a new "killer protein." As a science teacher, I can't help but like this book a lot. I've heard some people say that this book turned them into a vegetarian. Well, it didn't do that to me but, then again, I'm not the type. What it did do was make me appreciate Richard Rhodes' skill as a writer once again. This is a book that needs to be read.
Rating:
Summary: classic medical detective story
Review: Richard Rhodes provides a spectacular account of the discovery and elucidation of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. From cannibal feasts in the south pacific to the technocanibalism of the British beef industry, this book provides a concise summary of the last fifty years worth of research into "prions." Rhodes is also careful to scrutinize and question some of the most contentious points about prions, including Prusiner's assertions that eventual led to his receiving a nobel prize. This book truly captures the essence and magnitude of the public health dilemna surrounding TSEs. Overall a great work. Caution: readers who don't have a rudimentary grasp of genetics might want to have a medical dictionary handy.
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