Betrayal of trust : the collapse of global public health

Laurie Garrett.
Author/Creator:
Garrett, Laurie
Resource Type:
Book
Publication:
New York : Hyperion, [2000]
Edition:
First edition
Copyright Notice:
2000
Physical Description:
xiv, 754 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Availability

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Call Number Description Type Availability
RA441 .G37 2000

Details

Bibliography:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Filth and Decay: Pneumonic plague hits India and the world ill responds -- Landa-Landa: An Ebola virus epidemic in Zaire proves public health is imperiled by corruption -- Bourgeois Physiology: The collapse of all semblances of public health in the former Soviet Socialist Republics -- Preferring Anarchy and Class Disparity: The American public health infrastructure in an age of antigovernmentalism -- Biowar: Threatening biological terrorism and public health -- Epilogue: The changing face of public health and future global prophylaxis.
Summary:
  • In this meticulously researched and ultimately explosive new book by the Pulitzer Prize -- winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett takes on perhaps the most crucial global issue of our time. She asks: Is our collective health in a state of decline? If so, how dire is this crisis, and has the public health system itself contributed to it?
  • Using riveting detail and finely honed story-telling and reportorial skills, Garrett exposes the underbelly of the world's globalization: If India's economy is prospering, for example, how can there coexist with this new affluence an outbreak of pneumonic plague, a disease long thought to have been relegated to the history books? In Russia, alcoholism, drug addiction, TB, and the effects of such catastrophes as Chernobyl have shortened life expectancy for the average man by a full decade since 1991. In the United States, we face new "superstrains" of diseases we thought had been wiped out long ago. In addition, global travel has made it nearly impossible to keep what were once considered "third world diseases" out of our country. Has our public health system let us down, and if so, how serious is the danger to our collective health?
  • Garrett also takes us back to Zaire, the site of the Ebola outbreak that was among the topics of her first book. Amazingly, she finds a new outbreak, and discovers that few lessons were learned from the earlier crisis. And, in a startling chapter on biowarfare, Garrett explores this lurking danger to our society, and ways in which we are working, often behind closed doors, to monitor and contain that danger.
  • This book will no doubt be ranked with the classic Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Garrett asks, can it still be assumed that government can and will protect the populace's health? Or, has that trust been betrayed in this complex and frightening time?
Subject:
Genre:
Popular works
ISBN:
  • 9780786865222
  • 0786865229
LC Classification:
RA441 .G37 2000
Catalog Record ID:
991013024529703811
Language:
English

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