The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery

The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
- Used Book in Good Condition
For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.

What these strange conditionsâ€“including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow diseaseâ€“share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes go wrong, resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNAâ€“and the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.

In The Family That Couldnâ€™t Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prionâ€™s hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max explains this storyâ€™s connection to human greed and ambitionâ€“from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead nearly wiped them out. The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinaryâ€“for example, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described
â€œpedagogic pedophiliac pediatricianâ€ who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study.

With remarkable precision, grace, and sympathy, Maxâ€“who himself suffers from an inherited neurological illnessâ€“explores maladies that have tormented humanity for centuries and gives reason to hope that someday cures will be found. And he eloquently demonstrates that in our relationship to nature and these ailments, we have been our own worst enemy.

Advance praise

â€œThe Family that Couldnâ€™t Sleep is a riveting detective story that plumbs one of the deepest mysteries of biology. The story takes the reader from the torments of an Italian family cursed with sleeplessness to the mad cows of England (and, now, America), following an unlikely trail of misfolded proteins. D. T. Max unfolds his absorbing narrative with rare grace and makes the science sing.â€ â€“Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivoreâ€™s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire

â€œMuch has been written about prions and Mad Cow Diseaseâ€“nearly all of it is worthless. Thankfully, from the world of journalism comes D.T. Max to set things right. Throw all those other â€œMad Cowâ€ books in the trash: This is the book to read about prionsâ€“or whatever you want to call them. Itâ€™s a riveting tale, told by someone with a very special understanding, derived in part from his own strange ailment. Find a cozy spot, clear your schedule and dive in.â€
â€“ Laurie Garrett, author of Betrayal of Trust and The Coming Plague

â€œD. T. Max deftly unfolds the mysterious prion in all its villainous guises. Although scientists do not fully understand these proteinsâ€“how they replicate and wreak such havoc in their victimsâ€™ brainsâ€“The Family That Couldnâ€™t Sleep reveals their historical, cultural, and scientific place in our world. Prepare to be enlightened, entertained, and frightened.â€
â€“Katrina Firlik, MD, author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

â€œA great book.Â D.T. Max has drawn the curtainÂ on a cabinet of follyÂ and malady that will stagger your imagination.â€
â€“ Philip Weiss, author of American Taboo

â€œD.T. Max has combined the enthralling medical anthropology of Oliver Sacks with the gothic horror of Stephen King to produce a medical detective story that is as intelligent as it is spooky. The villain of The Family That Couldnâ€™t Sleep is the prion, a tiny little protein that causes some of the most terrifying, brain-mangling, creepy diseases known to man. Always fascinatingâ€“how could it not be, given that its characters include cannibals, mad cows, madder sheep, a Nobel prize-winning pedophile, and, most poignantly, an Italian family cursed by fatal insomnia?â€“Maxâ€™s book is also a gripping account of scientific discovery, and a heartfelt meditation on what it means to be cursed with an incurable, and brutal, illness.â€ â€“ David Plotz, author of The Genius Factory
Country USA
Brand Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2006-09-05
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781400062454

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2006-09-05
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781400062454

The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery

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