370 pages. Includes, maps, illustrations, photographs, endnotes, bibliography, and index.
Both books are for sale with Walmart but I am not sure of their shipping policies they seem to talk of store delivery.
Anyway if not, I am sure I can get them on Amazon and they haved shipped to me before.
I read the exerpt of your recommendation Resty and it does seem well written and could be interesting.
Us sailors Gran, love books of the sea. As a boy I was enchanted with the Hornblower series they alway made history come alive.
JEREMY LAURANCE, Health Editor - The Independent (U.K.)
A rare herb grown in China used to flavour duck dishes and treat infants for colic is at the centre of a worldwide search for a cure for avian flu.
Star anise, the unusual fruit of a small oriental tree, is sold in supermarkets in the UK to consumers seeking its pungent, liquorice-like flavour.
But the herb has a vital function as the source of shikimic acid from which the drug Tamiflu is made, the only defence the world currently has against the threatened flu pandemic.
Tamiflu cannot prevent infection with avian flu but it can reduce its severity. In the absence of an effective vaccine - which has not yet been developed - it is all that stands between the world and what could become a modern plague.
Yesterday it emerged that a shortage of star anise is one of the key reasons why countries ...
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Mushroom Yields First Of New Class Of Antibiotics
MICHAEL SMITH, Staff Writer - MedPage
WASHINGTON -- A small black mushroom found in the woods of northern Europe contains the first of what may be a powerful new class of antibiotics and antivirals, a researcher here says.
"I think we are looking at a whole new world of antibiotics," said Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D., of Georgetown University Medical Center.
Plectasin, a peptide derived from a fungus called Pseudoplectania nigrella, is as effective as penicillin and vancomycin in combating experimental peritonitis and pneumonia in mice, Dr. Zasloff and colleagues reported in the Oct. 13 issue of Nature.
The peptide is one of a class of molecules called defensins, which have previously been found in plants and animals. Plectasin is the first to be isolated from a fungus, Dr. Zasloff said.
Plectasin was tested against a range of bacteria, including streptococcus, enterococcus, and staphylococcus, Dr. Zasloff said, but other defensins have been shown ...
WASHINGTON - Quarantine — or some version of it — in a 21st-century flu pandemic would look very different from the medieval stereotype of diseased outcasts locked in a do-not-enter zone.
President Bush’s specter of a military-enforced mass quarantine is prompting debate of the Q-word as health officials update the nation’s plan for battling a pandemic — a plan expected to define who decides when and how to separate the contagious from everyone else.
“All the options need to be on the table,” said Dr. Marty Cetron, head of quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bush’s comments recall how quarantines were enforced in parts of this country in the 1890s, when armed guards patrolled streets to keep victims of smallpox and other dread diseases confined to their homes.
Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu
DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - The New York Times
A major Indian drug company announced yesterday that it would start making a generic version of Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug that is in critically short supply in the face of a possible epidemic of avian flu.
"Right or wrong, we're going to commercialize and make oseltamivir," said Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of Cipla of Bombay, using the drug's generic name and acknowledging that he might face a fight in the Indian courts with Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant that holds the patent.
Although generic manufacturers cannot legally sell the patented drug in the West, all national patent laws, including those of the United States, allow governments to cancel patents during emergencies and either buy generics or force patent holders to license their formulas to rivals.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which has recently ordered 12.3 million doses of Tamiflu from Roche, ...
370 pages. Includes, maps, illustrations, photographs, endnotes, bibliography, and index.