The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria - Hardcover

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Michael Shnayerson is a staff writer at "Vanity Fair" and the author of several books. He lives in New York. Mark Plotkin is one of the world's most renowned ethnobotanists. In 1998, "Time" declared him a "Hero for the Planet."

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At first glance, Shnayerson, a Vanity Fair staff writer, and noted ethnobotanist Plotkin (Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice) seem an unlikely pair to be writing a book about antibiotic resistance. Yet the reader quickly becomes engrossed in their tale. The authors provide an extremely readable look at the overuse of antibiotics, the methods bacteria use to develop resistance, the role of antibiotics as animal growth promoters, and the outlook for antibiotics. Drawing on a vast number of interviews with key people in the field, Shnayerson and Plotkin have managed to demonstrate their concern over the future of antibiotics while keeping the scientific background manageable for lay readers. A brief, annotated bibliography and list of web sites adds to the work. An interesting complement to Gerald Grob's The Deadly Truth, which discusses the inevitability of disease, this work also offers readers a riveting update to the section on antibiotics in Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague. Recommended for public and academic collections.
Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bacteria preceded human life by millions of years but will they also outlive us? Shnayerson, a staff writer at Vanity Fair magazine, and Plotkin, an ethnobotanist, paint an alarming picture of the crisis posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They focus on the three most common types: enterococci, streptococci and staphylococci. They tell of the deadly S. aureus a particularly virulent strain of staph that has shown up in deadly resistant strains and the infamous "flesh-eating bacteria" (necrotizing fascitis), whose incidence has been on the rise. They explain the myriad factors that have contributed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and disease, most important among them the overprescription and misuse of the drugs, including the antibiotics fed to livestock to promote growth. Sharing the latest research, the authors suggest that future antibiotics are in the most unlikely places, from shark-bellies and silkmoths to the saliva of the Indonesian Komodo dragon. Shnayerson and Plotkin write in a lively, journalistic style and spotlight many victims, microbiologists and other "faces" behind the statistics, going far to make the copious scientific information accessible to general readers (though some may still be daunted). Yet their alarmist tone may strike many readers as overly sensationalistic and grating. Moreover, many of the facts about antibiotics abuse and drug-resistant bacteria are simply old news, and this book may not drum up much interest in spite of its informative analysis.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Commenting in 1969 on the success of antibiotics, U.S. Surgeon General William Stewart declared: "We can close the books on infectious diseases." Commenting three decades later on the rapid spread of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher declared: "We are seeing a global resurgence of infectious diseases." Shnayerson and Plotkin (respectively, a staff writer at Vanity Fair and an ethnobotanist serving as president of the Amazon Conservation Team) recount what brought about the resurgence: "The principal cause was overuse--and misuse--of antibiotics." Poor infection control in hospitals and nursing homes is a contributing factor. Is there a way of stopping the march of the bugs? Maybe. The authors explore several possibilities but stop short of predicting that any of them will succeed.

Editors of Scientific American

When some bacteria began to develop resistance to penicillin, few physicians worried, because methicillin was available. Now many bacteria are resistant to both antibiotics, and physicians, researchers, and the rest of us really have something to worry about. Schnayerson and Plotkin clearly explain how these changes occurred, and they describe the abuse and misuse of other drugs, how resistance moves from animals to humans (e.g., though agricultural use of antibiotics), and how hygiene failures in hospitals and daycare centers aggravate the situation. They bring to life the work of individual researchers, such as Felix d'Herelle and Patrick Schlievert, and they chastise drug-company publicists and entrepreneurs out for a quick buck for their greed and their failure to accept the lessons of science. They draw on excellent work in Scandinavia and elsewhere, and on such seemingly irrelevant animals as the Komodo dragon, to demonstrate the diverse elements that have been drawn into this area of investigation. They are, however, not optimistic, concluding that "the bugs seem to have figured it [overcoming antibiotics] out." William Beatty
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