Review by Booklist Review
Repulsive they may be to us, but Mother Nature cares not a whit for our feelings about parasites. She's concerned only with how successful those deadly freeloaders are in the evolutionary struggle, and, by any measure, parasites are thriving winners. This is a ghastly state of affairs for sufferers of river blindness, sleeping sickness, malaria, and more; fortunately, in the outlands of biology, a specialty called parasitology labors to understand and combat the organisms causing such afflictions. This is the field Zimmer unblinkingly explores, replete with scenes of dissections that expose the worms, flukes, and single-celled organisms that invade a host. Gross! But as Zimmer estimably explains how tough life is from the parasite's perspective, such as the relentless battle with the host's immune system, the reader begins to concede parasites their niche in the ecological system. Further, Zimmer usefully discusses parasites' behaviors, especially their defenses against antibodies, as evolutionary adaptations reaching back to the primeval epochs of life's history. A well-organized and well-presented survey of parasites' life cycles and the debilitations they cause. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
One of the year's most fascinating works of popular science is also its most disgusting. From tapeworms to isopods to ichneumon wasps, "parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life." Zimmer (At the Water's Edge) devotes his second book to the enormous variety of one- and many-celled organisms that live on and inside other animals and plants. The gruesome trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness had nearly been routed from Sudan when the country's civil war began: now they're back. Costa Rican researcher Daniel Brooks has discovered dozens of parasites, including flies that lay eggs in deer noses: "snot bots." And those are only the creatures from the prologue. Zimmer discusses how the study of parasites began, with 19th-century discoveries about their odd life cycles. (Many take on several forms in several generations, so that a mother worm may resemble her granddaughter, but not her daughter.) He looks at how parasites pass from host to host, and how they defeat immune systems and vice versa. Many parasites alter their hosts' behavior: Toxoplasma makes infected rats fearless, thus more likely to be eaten by cats, who will then pick up the microbe. Quantifiable "laws of virulence" lead parasites to become nasty enough to spread, yet not so nasty as to wipe out all their hosts. And eons of coevolution can affect both partners: howler monkeys may avoid violent fights because screwworms can render the least scratch fatal. Two final chapters address parasites in human medicine and agriculture. Not only are parasites not all bad, Zimmer concludes in this exemplary work of popular science, but we may be parasites, tooDand we have a lot to learn from them about how to manage earth, the host we share. Illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Zimmer, a columnist at National History, has written an absolutely fascinating book about parasitesDonce the reader gets past the "grossness" factor. As with his previous book, At the Water's Edge (LJ 2/1/98), evolution is central: Zimmer considers not only how parasites have evolved but how they may have helped the evolution of other species. Though humans are not the only species discussed, some of the most interesting evolutionary theories come from human-parasite relations. Mild cases of sickle cell anemia, for instance, seem to protect against malaria, implying that these sorts of blood diseases have evolved with the aid of parasites. The author discusses more recent research suggesting that some modern diseases, such as allergies or ulcerative colitis, may actually be triggered by our immune systems' not having parasites to fight. This well-written book makes parasitology interesting and accessible to anyone. Not a textbook (a few good ones are recommended in a selected bibliography), it does have a place in science libraries, even for students who don't realize that their field of study is related to parasitology. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DMargaret Henderson, Cold Spring Harbor Academics, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Parasites, the stuff of many people's nightmares, are a biologist's dream--superbly adapted creatures that have evolved sophisticated strategies for living off their hosts. Discover editor Zimmer (At the Water's Edge, 1998) describes the parasites' lifestyles in vivid detail. His subjects range in size from the protozoan Plasmodium (which can fit inside a human red blood cell) to tapeworms, which can grow 60 feet long. Living inside another creature's body requires developing elaborate ways to dodge the immune system, from hiding in cysts to releasing tame viruses that decoy defenses from the actual threat. Some parasites can modify the behavior of their intermediate hosts, making them more vulnerable to the predators that are their final hosts: Toxoplasma, which passes from rats to cats, turns off a panic mechanism triggered by the smell of cat urine, so the rats no longer instinctively avoid their feline hunters. Many parasites sterilize their prey, diverting energy from reproductive activity to the creation of food for the parasite. Parasitologists believe that this sort of behavior, making some infected animals 30 times more likely to be eaten, has a profound effect on the balance of predator and prey species in the wild. But to most readers, the real meat of the book will be its description of the ways in which parasites affect the human race. The biggest surprise: rainforest Indians in Venezuela, commonly infested with intestinal parasites, are almost entirely free of asthma. Scientists speculate that, without parasites to repel, the immune system turns its attention to otherwise minor irritants such as dust mites and cat dander. As with so many other apparent advances, the cure for one disease may well be the cause of another. An eye-opening perspective on biology, ecology, and medicine--well worth reading, even if the subject makes you squeamish. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
