[.ca] The Best American Science Writing 2001 (ISBN 0060936487)

Read with pleasure.:
This is the first book of this series that I stumbled upon and read in almost all of its entirety. As I understand, every year a prominent guest-writer who is well versed in science is invited to hand-pick articles from various publications such as Discover, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Times, Scientific American, and others that are ultimately incorporated in this annual publication. There is also a series editor, as some may have noticed, that does some editing as well. The articles that are featured in this book are original, lucid, entertaining, and often shocking at the same time. The first 2/3rds of the book I found to be especially interesting and essential for knowledge and 'practical survival'. The Genome Warrior, DNA on Trial, Let Them Eat Fat, The He Hormone, and Death of an Altruist are the most memorable to me. Want to know the story behind Craig Venter's quest to the sequencing of human genome? Ever wondered about the kind of injustices that take place in prosecutions and how DNA testing comes to the rescue? Wanted to know how the testosterone hormone affects one's behavior? What about South African struggle with AIDS epidemic and pseudoscience that somehow seeped into its policies that deal with administering drugs to HIV-infected patients? Would like to know the purpose of an evolutionary adaptation of being in close proximity to humans and other organisms? If you answered to some of these questions with a resounding 'yes' then you may want to indulge your brain to knowing. Some of the articles are political. However, science always wins! I want to suggest to those who are very frugal to try to obtain aforementioned and the rest of the articles online. Amazon allows you to read the contents page. Although, it may sound unethically to some.

Polio, testosterone, and the French Disease:
Even though astronomer Timothy Ferris edited this collection of 2001 science articles, the emphasis is on biological rather than physical sciences. Some of the essays describe the way science is done, and the ways that ignorance or politics can interfere with its results. I wish this book could have chronicled the progressive triumph of science over superstition and bureaucratic weirdness. Instead, Helen Epstein's, "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa" shows what happens when a government backs an unproven theory on the cause of HIV infection. Another essay by Robert L. Park offers a scientific (or at least, sane) solution to a fantasy beloved of Americans: "Welcome to Planet Earth" tells the true story of what happened at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 (there actually was a secret government project). A couple of essays struck me as inspired silliness. Stephen Jay Gould's "Syphilis and the Shepherd of Atlantis" illuminates Fracastoro's Virgilian ode to "Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus," also known as the Spanish Disease, English Disease, Neapolitan Disease, and 'Treponema pallidum.' Andrew Sullivan's "The He Hormone" was not written to be silly--the author was taking testosterone to combat the fatigue of an HIV infection--but it did very much remind me of the crowing scene in "Peter Pan." In "Running Dry," Jacques Leslie chronicles the unassailable fact that we are running out of fresh water. Although this essay was written in 2000, it seems particularly relevant to this summer of ferocious drought and wildfire. The author develops a somber case against our current dam-building and irrigation processes. However, "Running Dry" wasn't the book's most shocking essay--at least for me, since I was already aware of the fresh water crisis. The shocker was "The Virus and the Vaccine" by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher. Anyone who is over the age of forty might want to read this article, which was originally published in "The Atlantic Monthly." Here is why it is so interesting: "A breakthrough in the war against polio had come in the early 1950s, when Jonas Salk took advantage of a new discovery: monkey kidneys could be used to culture the abundant quantities of polio virus necessary to mass-produce a vaccine. In 1960 Bernice Eddy, a government researcher, discovered that when she injected hamsters with the kidney mixture on which the vaccine was cultured, they developed tumors...The cancer-causing virus was soon isolated by other scientists and dubbed SV40..." (Incidentally, Bernice Eddy's superiors tried to suppress her discovery. She was eventually demoted and lost her laboratory. But by 1963, laboratories stopped using monkey kidneys to produce polio vaccine.) The SV40 virus was presumed harmless to humans, and no further investigations were done until 1993 when Michele Carbone, an Italian pathologist, decided to research the origins of mesothelioma, a rare and deadly cancer of the mesothelial cells in the lining of the chest and lung. Asbestos exposure was linked to mesothelioma, which takes twenty to forty years to develop-- but Dr. Carbone also wondered if the cancer might also be caused by SV40. Read "The Virus and the Vaccine" to learn the results of Dr. Carbone's research--especially if you were vaccinated for polio between 1955 and 1963. In fact, read all of the articles in this collection. They were written to hold the attention of lay readers like me, and most of them chronicle darn interesting science.

Of Interest Not Only To Science Teachers:
This is a splendid anthology of scientific writing which should be of interest to the general public, as well as to teachers and students of science. Helen Epstein has a highly critical look at South Africa's response to its devastating AIDS epidemic in her essay "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa". New York Times science writer Natalie Angier gives a humorous, mesmerizing look at mandrills in "In Mandrill Society, Life Is a Girl Thing". Distinguished evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr provides a thoughtful, profound look on "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought". Paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould has an interesting overview of Syphilis' early European history in his "Syphilis and the Shepherd of Atlantis". Alan Lightman offers a poignant look at his youth in "A Portrait of the Novelist as a Young Scientist". Richard Powers unearths the politics and intrigue behind the sequencing of the human genome in "The Genome Warrior". These are merely a few of the twenty two essays - and in the case of novelist John Updike, one poem - edited by Timothy Ferris for this volume.

An interesting, diverse, and readable collection:
This is the first of these collections that I have read, and it is very good. The articles are chosen from a wide spectrum of publications from the year 2000, including Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, etc., which means most of the essays were written in 1999 or thereabouts. There is a minor concentration on the exciting developments in genetics and microbiology, including "The Recycled Generation" by Stephen S. Hall, which is about stem-cell research; "The Genome Warrior" by Richard Preston, which is about Craig Ventor and the human genome project; "DNA on Trial" by Peter J. Boyer, focusing on lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld's Innocence Project; and a couple of articles on AIDS, "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa" by Helen Epstein and "The Virus and the Vaccine" by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher. My favorite piece was "The Small Planets" by Erik Asphaug where I learned a little about the surprising physics of asteroids, in particular that they are most likely composed of rubble held lightly together by low gravity instead of being solid objects. When they collide, the "rubble piles" are disturbed, but within a few hours most of the pieces come back together again if the collision was not too violent. I also particularly liked John Terborgh's piece "In the Company of Humans" in which he demonstrates that animals can be attracted to humans for reasons as diverse as safety in numbers (like different species of birds foraging together) or being fascinated by a lemon-scented detergent used by a primatologist. He relates the story of a sick peccary that hung out near humans until it got well, that way avoiding hungry jaguars. Also fascinating was Greg Critser's "Let Them Eat Fat" which is about how the fast food industry is "super-sizing" us into obesity. (By the way, I tried for the first time a few months ago a Krispy Kreme donut, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was a warm puppy of an "empty-calorie" confection, pure white flour, made almost as light as air, smothered in fat and glazed with pure white sugar. It practically melted in my mouth. I can see how a steady diet of these babies could lead to a nutritional nightmare.) Also good were Andrew Sullivan's "The He Hormone" about the phenomenon of testosterone, and Jacques Leslie"s "Running Dry" which is about the mixed blessing (and ultimate failure) of damming rivers, and the present and future crisis in the supply of fresh water. There is a sprinkling of rather ordinary pieces by scientific heavyweights, John Archibald Wheeler, Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, and Freeman J. Dyson, which are collected here perhaps as much for the prestige they lend to this volume as for the value of the essays. But you be the judge. The interesting articles by Joel Achenbach and Robert L. Park, "Life Beyond Earth" and "Welcome to Planet Earth," respectively, serve well as introductions to their recently published books, Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe (1999), and Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (2000), again, respectively. Bottom line: this eminently accessible collection is well worth the candle.

"People don't like to face reality":
If you are indeed one of those people, you'd better not read this book. Nearly every page confronts you with a new reality. In some essays you'll have your nose forcibly rubbed in it. But don't despair, even with some of the grim pictures presented here, nearly all contain some message of hope, as well. Timothy Ferris has assembled an impressive array of science writing covering topics ranging from quantum physics to the water you drink. There's something here for everyone, but read them all, new doors may open for your mind. And, typically with Ferris, he begins the collection in an unexpected way - a poem from John Updike. Who but Updike could produce sensitive, compelling verse about transparent sea animals? Examining the universe is an overwhelming challenge. Galaxies, stars, gas clouds, planets - the images appear almost daily. But what about the stuff we can't see? Michael Turner, an astronomer with impressive narrative skills, describes his quest for "dark matter," the mysterious stuff that may be impeding the expansion of the cosmos. He notes that the "missing mass" often credited with explaining why the universe isn't evolving the way we once thought, is a misnomer: "It's the light, not the mass, that's missing." Turner's explanation of what's actually happening will surprise the reader. In another essay, matter that isn't "dark," but still is behaving in unexpected ways is explained by Erik Asphaug. Asteroids, those little worlds cohabiting the solar system with us, are revealing their secret lives. Other lives are revealed here, as well. Mandrills, a primate of bizarre appearance, also turn out to have a bizarre lifestyle. Just as we were all growing accustomed to the image of "alpha" males in the baboon and ape worlds, mandrills have evolved a unique feminist society. In Central Africa, Natalie Angier encountered huge troops of mandrills, all female. Males are relegated to a mostly "monastic" life - a pattern seen in only one other of the 225 primate species. Life at a more fundamental level is examined by Stephen Hall's account of stem cell research. Life's condition today and its prospects for tomorrow are the topic of other essays. Greg Critser presents a grim picture of American eating habits; the "obesity epidemic" sweeping society. Which Americans are overweight and why? Critser's analysis offers some unexpected answers. Health is a concern for any people, and those who seek to restore health are too often unknown and unheralded. Helen Epstein examines the history of combating AIDS in South Africa where questions of health become interspersed with international economics and local politics. Health issues at local levels are examined in the most powerful essay in the collection. Tracy Kidder follows "The Good Doctor" on his rounds. Paul Farmer's patients, however, are not restricted to a local hospital or clinic. He travels from Boston to Haiti, Cuba to Peru, even to Siberia as he intently seeks to restore the afflicted to health. And, incidentally, to petition the affluent for support in his work. When entreaty fails, he calls on a talent for deviousness a spy would envy. He's still out there working and he still needs your support. Find out who he is from this essay and why you should favour his requests. There are too many issues and ideas in this collection to impart them all here. The quote acting as the title of this review comes from the person in charge of water conservation for the fastest growing metropolis in America - Las Vegas. Turn to Jacques Leslie's article to learn why that city may well lack water within the next five years. Your throat may turn dry as you read, but you will hesitate to run to the kitchen for a brimming glassful of water. Instead, you may find yourself prowling the house to stop any dripping taps. You can close the taps, but if you read this magnificent collection of essays, you will be opening your mind. If you're not afraid of reality and are willing to confront it, buy and enjoy this book. It's a treasure.