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Book Review, © Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
This is a delightful book about parasites within human bodies. Honest!
The book is very informative. There are a lot of parasites out there, mainly in the third world. This book has chapters on malaria, sleeping sickness, river blindness, schistosomiasis, and giardia. We find that some parasites are spread through uncooked food (like sushi), and by other human behavior (like where people defecate). We see how sickle-cell trait can protect against malaria.
But the book is also entertaining. We find that rich people on Nantucket can acquire certain parasites that the rest of us seldom get. And Jewish grandmothers have been known to get a tapeworm from Norwegian fishermen, through the fish that the fishermen catch and the grandmothers cook (and taste before it's done). We even see that a certain parasite may be beneficial to its host (but we may choose to do without the benefits). And the Aswan High Dam, in Egypt, has caused (and continues to cause) much illness (and death) due to parasites.
This book may help keep you humble. After all, we humans are still part of nature, sometimes in rather grotesque ways.
To order this book, click Amazon.com (goes directly to this book).