New from Copernicus
With Mad Cow Disease in the news, now is the time to read The Pathological Protein, Philip Yam's account of the prion. The prion is a bizarre, misshapen version of a protein, which is an agent of disease in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD, the form that Mad Cow Disease takes in human beings) and a host of other devastating neurological disorders. Yam describes how the mysterious prion was discovered and how it has been linked to a number of exotic and poorly understood illnesses. Yam also explains how likely it is that scientists will soon find effective tools for controlling its spread, diagnosing its presence, and treating the devastating disorders it causes.