Jaap Goudsmit – författare
Visar alla böcker från författaren . Handla med fri frakt och snabb leverans.
4 produkter
4 produkter
Inbunden, Engelska, 1997
520 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
The AIDS threat has mobilized an unprecedented research effort to understand and control the disease. We have discovered its agent, HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. Every day we know more about this complex retrovirus and how it works, but we still lack an effective defense strategy. This book will give the nonspecialist an AIDS overview and a vantage point from which to observe and support the continuing struggle with HIV. It also will urge that we look beyond this deadly virus. As we seek vaccines and therapies to stop its fatal course, we must understand that the real cause of AIDS is not HIV. It is the environmental context that allowed the virus to escape its natural host and enter the human population at this particular time in history. The question is why, after millenia of contact between African monkeys and humans, has SIV (Simian immunodeficiency virus) only now entered the human population in plague proportions? Is its introduction a purely random and natural disaster, or is it somehow the result of human social and cultural evolution? This book explains how human encroachment on the African monkey habitat set up conditions that made it possible and almost likely that the virus would successfully jump to a new host, with the consequences that we now see as the world wide AIDS epidemic. It presents the full history of the various subtypes of the virus, and the epidemics they cause, and assembles the future threats in every region of the world. The book argues that facing our responsibility for the AIDS outbreak holds the key to reversing the damage. If we study our actions and this lethal natural reaction, we can find ways to halt the AIDS and prevent similar plagues that could erupt in the future.
Häftad, Engelska, 1998
667 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
In Viral Sex, leading AIDS researcher Jaap Goudsmit illuminates the origins and nature of the world's most lethal epidemic. This fascinating epidemiological whodunit, or...`howdunit' (The Lancet), takes us on a journey from the African rainforest, to ancient Egypt, to pioneering research labs in the U.S. and Europe.The concept of `viral sex', Goudsmit explains, is central to understanding the AIDS crisis. HIV not only produces offspring that are almost exact copies of the parents, but also reproduces sexually, creating a recombinant population of variants. This `viral sex' gives HIV an edge in adapting to new hosts, enabling it to survive the leap from ape to man. Goudsmit argues that the man-made phenomenon of deforestation and human encroachment on the African monkey habitat provided the opportunity for the SIV virus to jump to its new host, human beings, who then brought HIV out of the Cameroon rainforest at the turn of the century.Provocative, vividly written, and impeccably researched, Viral Sex instills readers with a new sense of the urgent need to contain HIV and other similarly lethal viruses before they spread beyond the grasp of even the most sophisticated science.
Inbunden, Engelska, 2004
1 478 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
Despite vaccines and medicines, we have not succeeded in eradicating the most dangerous viruses in the world, like jaundice, measles, diarrhoea, polio and AIDS, not to mention newcomers like West Nile and SARS. Also, since September 11, it is no longer unthinkable that a terrorist would intentionally spread a virus among people or the food chain. In this book, Jaap Goudsmit argues that there is no such thing as life without viruses for many reasons, including the fact that many viruses spread without any visible signs, and can hide in animals; that there are too many different species of viruses and they multiply much faster than any animal or plant; and that infections strike especially in areas where life is difficult enough already, such as Africa and Asia. However, if viruses hold onto life so stubbornly, perhaps they can be useful to other living beings. Do viruses offer people a better chance of survival in a hostile world? Do viruses make people fitter? Some viruses seem to play a role in the process whereby our genes adapt to the environment. What is it that makes viruses incredibly strong, and can we learn something from it? What is the secret of the enormous "fitness" of viruses? Will viruses spell the end of mankind or will man always be able to offer resistance? This book attempts to answer these and other questions.
E-bok
PDF, Engelska, 1997228 kr
Läs direkt efter köp
The current worldwide AIDS crisis is about 20 years old, but the disease itself is much older. In fact, AIDS is only the latest chapter in the evolution of the complex retrovirus we call HIV. Where was HIV lurking before it emerged in the early 1980s? There is some evidence that the Western strain of HIV arose in Europe as early as 1939. There is even more evidence that HIV is a direct descendant of a virus which has long infected certain African apes and monkeys, a virus called SIV--simian immunodeficiency virus. But why is a virus that is harmless in monkeys so lethal in human beings? And why, after millennia of contact between African monkeys and humans, is SIV only now entering the human population in plague proportions? In Viral Sex, leading AIDS researcher Jaap Goudsmit illuminates the origins and nature of the world''s most lethal disease. He provides an eyewitness account of sciences effort to understand and control the spread of this deadly virus, in a fascinating journey that reaches from the deepest recesses of the African rainforest, to ancient Egypt and the mummified remains of Barbary apes, to pioneering research labs in the U.S. and Europe. A key idea in understanding the AIDS crisis, we discover, is the concept of "viral sex." We learn that HIV not only produces offspring that are almost exact copies of the parents, as do most other viruses, but that it can also reproduce sexually, creating a recombinant population of subtly varying members. This "viral sex" gives HIV an edge in adapting inside a foreign body, and this is why the virus could survive the leap from ape to man. But Goudsmit presents devastating evidence that the real villain of the AIDS epidemic is not HIV, but the ongoing destruction of the Western Equatorial rainforest and the wild monkeys and apes who once thrived there. Goudsmit argues that human encroachment on the African monkey habitat provided the opportunity for the SIV virus to jump to its new host, human beings. He also describes how humans then brought HIV out of the rainforest at the turn of the century, most probably to Cameroon. From there some strains went to German East Africa, where the virus evolved into the African AIDS virus we see today, while other strains left Cameroon for Germany on the eve of World War II. Goudsmit is uniquely qualified to provide readers with vital perspective on this worldwide crisis. Provocative, vividly written, and impeccably researched, Viral Sex instills readers with a new sense of the urgent need to contain HIV and other similarly lethal viruses before they spread beyond the grasp of even the most sophisticated science.