People, Parasites, and Plowshares

Dickson D. Despommier is emeritus professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia University. For thirty-eight years, he taught parasitic diseases to second year medical students at Columbia's medical school. He has won numerous teaching awards, including the prestigious Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence from the American Medical Students Association. He is the author of more than seventy peer-reviewed research articles, numerous reviews, and three books, including The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the Twenty-First Century. William C. Campbell is a retired senior research scientist at Merck, Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He discovered and helped develop the drugs thiabendazole, ivermectin, and related derivatives. Both parent compounds have helped to reduce or eliminate certain parasitic worm infections in cattle and humans. He is a world renowned expert on drug discovery, a former president of the American Society for Parasitologists, and is currently a RISE associate at Drew University.

Foreword by William C. Campbell Preface Acknowledgments 1. This New House: Trichinalla spiralis 2. Hooked on Parasites: Ancylostoma duodenale and Necator americanus 3. Houdini's Nefarious Cousins: The Trypanosomes, the Schistosomes, and the Lymphatic Filariae 4. A Parasite for All Seasons: Toxoplasma gondii 5. The Unholy Trinity: Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, and the Hookworms 6. The Long and the Short of It: Tapeworms-Taenia saginata, Taenia solium, Diphyllobothrium latum, Echinococcus granulosus, and Echinococcus multilocularis 7. All's Well That Ends Wells: Dracunculus medinensis 8. Nature Has All the Answers. What's Your Question? Glossary Further Reading Index