Deadly Outbreaks
How Medical Detectives Save Lives Threatened by Killer Pandemics, Exotic Viruses, and Drug-Resistant Parasites
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Narrated by:
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Julie McKay
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By:
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Alexandra Levitt
About this listen
Take a visit to the frontline as scientists fight to solve medical mysteries.
Despite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors. Vaccines and antibiotics, the mainstays of modern medicine, have not been able to conquer infectious microbes because of their amazing ability to adapt, evolve, and spread to new places. Terrorism aside, one of the greatest dangers from infectious disease we face today is from a massive outbreak of drug-resistant microbes.
Deadly Outbreaks recounts the scientific adventures of a special group of intrepid individuals who investigate these outbreaks around the world and figure out how to stop them. Part homicide detective, part physician, these medical investigators must view the problem from every angle, exhausting every possible source of contamination. Any data gathered in the field must be stripped of human sorrows and carefully analyzed into hard statistics.
Author Dr. Alexandra Levitt is an expert on emerging diseases and other public health threats. Here she shares insider accounts she's collected that go behind the alarming headlines we've seen in the media: mysterious food poisonings, unexplained deaths at a children's hospital, a strange neurologic disease afflicting slaughterhouse workers, flocks of birds dropping dead out of the sky, and drug-resistant malaria running rampant in a refugee camp. Meet the resourceful investigators - doctors, veterinarians, and research scientists - and discover the truth behind these cases and more.
©2013 Alexandra Levitt (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
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Great Book!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
By: Thomas Hager
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The Fatal Strain
- On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic
- By: Alan Sipress
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When avian flu began spreading across Asia in the early 2000s, it reawakened fears that had lain dormant for nearly a century. During the outbreak's deadliest years, Alan Sipress chased the virus as it infiltrated remote jungle villages and teeming cities and saw its mysteries elude the world's top scientists. In The Fatal Strain, Sipress details how socioeconomic and political realities in Asia make it the perfect petri dish in which the fast-mutating strain can become easily communicable among humans.
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Narrator comments
- By Don on 01-10-10
By: Alan Sipress
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Seven Modern Plagues
- And How We Are Causing Them
- By: Mark Jerome Walter
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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According to veterinarian and journalist Mark Walters, we are contributing to - if not overtly causing - some of the scariest epidemics of our time. Through human stories and cutting-edge science, Walters explores the origins of seven diseases: Mad Cow Disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme Disease, Hantavirus, West Nile, and new strains of flu. He shows that they originate from manipulation of the environment, from emitting carbon and clear-cutting forests to feeding naturally herbivorous cows “recycled animal protein.”
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Frightening, truthful and a real eye opener
- By RobJD on 02-23-15
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The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- A Medical Mystery
- By: D.T. Max
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For 200 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. What these strange conditions share is their cause: prions.
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A great scientific mystery
- By David on 11-04-06
By: D.T. Max
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Happy Accidents
- Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century
- By: Morton A. Meyers
- Narrated by: Richard Waterhouse
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Happy Accidents is a fascinating, entertaining, and highly accessible look at the surprising role serendipity has played in some of the most important medical discoveries in the 20th century. What do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else. In discussing medical breakthroughs, Dr. Morton Meyers makes a cogent, highly engaging argument for a more creative, rather than purely linear, approach to science. And it may just save our lives!
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Don't waste your money!
- By Amazon Customer on 03-20-16
By: Morton A. Meyers
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Missing Microbes
- How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
- By: Martin J. Blaser
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin J. Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human microbiome, where for hundreds of thousands of years bacterial and human cells have existed in a peaceful symbiosis that is responsible for the health and equilibrium of our body. Now this invisible eden is being irrevocably damaged by some of our most revered medical advances-antibiotics-threatening the extinction of our irreplaceable microbes with terrible health consequences.
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Very enlightening and information well supported
- By James on 05-03-15
By: Martin J. Blaser
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Polio
- An American Story
- By: David M. Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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This comprehensive and gripping narrative, which received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for history, covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.
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Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-22-08
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The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
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Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
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Lab 257
- The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory
- By: Michael Christopher Carroll
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds - and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. Lab 257 blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore.
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More Politics Than Science
- By A Customer on 05-26-17
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The Emperor of All Maladies
- A Biography of Cancer
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance but also of hubris, arrogance, paternalism, and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer".
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Incredible
- By S.R.E. on 03-02-16
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The Remedy
- Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis
- By: Thomas Goetz
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1875, tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the world, accountable for a third of all deaths. A diagnosis of TB - often called consumption - was a death sentence. Then, in a triumph of medical science, a German doctor named Robert Koch deployed an unprecedented scientific rigor to discover the bacteria that caused TB. Koch soon embarked on a remedy - a remedy that would be his undoing. When Koch announced his cure for consumption, Arthur Conan Doyle, then a small-town doctor in England and sometime writer, went to Berlin to cover the event.
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thought-provoking
- By Jean on 07-06-14
By: Thomas Goetz
What listeners say about Deadly Outbreaks
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Russell
- 08-27-14
The delivery really kills this one
One of my favorite topics for nonfiction books. However, it's REALLY hard to get past the narrator on this one. It seems to plod along in a very monotone delivery. Common acronyms are spelled out rather than pronounced phonetically (USAMRIID for example). The organization of the chapters seems to vary as well.
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4 people found this helpful
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- PossumPie
- 06-17-19
Narrator un-listenable. Captain Kirk at 1/2 speed.
The material, while done and redone by others before was at least interesting. I had to return it for credit after a few hours because of the narration. The woman sounded like Captain Kirk on heavy sedation. Within the first 5 minutes I cranked it up to 1.25 X speed because she spoke so slowly that It hurt my ears. Even 1.25 was too slow but 1.5X sounded strange. And she had unnatural pauses the way William Shatner did in Star Trek. "The...virus was a particularly.............virulent....strain.....that hadn't been.....seen.....before." Oh, my. Not trying to make fun, but it was awful. After the 7th time of hearing "USAMRIID" spelled out "u-s-a-m-r-i-i-d" I threw in the towel. I'll get a used copy of the book or get it on Kindle if I really want to finish it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- JOSEPH A
- 11-05-21
Beautifully written and narrated
I really enjoyed listening to this book. But the Chapter narration does not match the chapter displayed.
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- seikeda
- 01-14-23
I like this stuff
I don’t know why but I love to read/listen to books about outbreaks and viruses. This is a solid book about outbreaks I remember from when I was younger. It doesn’t include the COVID outbreak but it details how they are investigated and hunted down.
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- T. Anderson
- 04-17-21
Lots of detail on epidemiological procedures.
If you or someone you know is considering a career in epidemiology or microbiology, this is a fascinating introduction to some of the concepts and procedures used by epidemiologists. It's loaded with genuine science rather than morbid details and fear-mongering. Don't you want to know how Sin Nombre virus was discovered? How about the emergence of Legionnaire's Disease? Despite the details that probably require a rewind or two for us lay folk to understand what's going on, the "plot" moves at a nice pace. The narration is pleasant to listen to, and more animated than many non-fiction narrations. An excellent book, though unfortunately getting a little bit dated from a post-Covid point of view.
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- Columbus
- 04-08-21
Narration was the struggle
The mispronounced words. Worth hiring a person with some biology background to read next time.
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- C. Tipton
- 02-04-20
A bit too "human interest" for me.
When the science was presented, it was presented well, with a good balance of information for the layperson interested in epidemiology, like myself. It was the biographies of the people involved, how the personnel were recently married, or engaged, were introverts or extroverts, etc, etc, that lost my interest. I was interested in some of the science and history of epidemiology, not particularly in mini-biographies of some epidemiologists.
Also, and this annoyed me the whole chapter, a serial murder, while interesting in another context, is not an "outbreak." Even if it was thought to be an outbreak prior to investigation. I felt that chapter, three, I think, should have been in another book entirely.
Finally, the narration was adequate at best. A friend who I gave a ride to asked if this was an AI voice assistant reading the book, like Alexa or SIri. The sentences had odd breaks e.g. "hundreds... of thousands," the words were often oddly or over enunciated... I could only wish for better in the future.
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1 person found this helpful
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- IowaGreyhound
- 11-22-18
Exciting tales of mystery diseases
The book is great. As a microbiologist I already knew most of the diseases, but the investigations to find the causes and how the EIS, health departments, other organizations and lab personnel worked with medical personnel and patients were covered in an insightful and interesting manner. The reader needs to learn how to pronounce scientific words and acronyms. USAMRIID is pronounced you-SAM-rid, not spelled out. ELISA is pronounced with a long I, not as eleesa. Her frequent mispronunciations drove me crazy, but the book was great enough to ignore them. Each chapter is a biological mystery. If you are at all interested in biology, epidemiology or even good mysteries you will enjoy this book.
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- Cathleen Colbert
- 01-11-21
Too many acronyms and too slow
Within a few sentences I immediately set the speed to 1.1 because the narrator’s lethargic reading rate was annoying. The author’s use of acronyms for everything makes understanding difficult. It’s like she’s too lazy to write West Nile or New York. Not the best.
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- Raynebow
- 10-18-15
Would prefer a better narrator.
The story is very informative however, the narration is boring. It does help me sleep.
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