AIDS journalist Helen Epstein takes on malaria politics in this month’s Harper‘s magazine, in a long and thoughtful review essay on The Fever. It’s enough to make a gal re-subscribe (which I just did!)
Category: Books (Page 2 of 9)
Yes, another famous person has come down with malaria! It was British model Cheryl Cole most recently, and now the actor George Clooney, who has just recovered from a bout contracted in Sudan. He’s taking questions about the disease at NYTimes.com, via Nicholas Kristof’s blog.
It’ll be interesting to learn whether he took prophylaxis or not. I suspect he did not. Many Westerners who travel regularly to malaria-endemic regions don’t, including some top malariologists I’ve met. I suppose they feel immune, sleeping in air-conditioned rooms and enjoying easy access to prompt treatment. And mostly they are, compared to the 300,000+ people living in huts and slums who get infected every year. Personally, though, I’d never skip the preventive drugs. The history of malaria shows that that wily parasite and the mosquito that ferries it around are full of secrets and surprises.
On a separate note–I once appeared in a documentary about the film “Syriana,” talking about oil politics in connection with my book “Crude.” As George Clooney stars in “Syriana,” he appeared in the documentary too. Which means, of course, that I was in a movie with George Clooney!
“The lessons of history should give us pause,” writes the medical historian W.F. Bynum in a long piece about malaria vaccines in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.
The occasion for Bynum’s piece is the publication of an optimistic new book about malaria vaccines, written by the entrepreneur-philanthropist Bill Shore, with the somewhat nauseating title of “The
Imaginations of Unreasonable Men: Inspiration, Vision, and Purpose in the Quest to End Malaria.” (I’m no strident stickler for gender-neutral language, but really? Unreasonable men? In the TITLE? Take that, Melinda Gates and Regina Rabinovich.)
Shore’s book is an homage to the charitable work of Bill and Melinda Gates, giving “upbeat profiles” of Gates Foundation beneficiaries, as Bynum puts it. Bynum tackles the question as to whether their quest to develop a malaria vaccine is really the be-all end-all of malaria. “Most malariologists agree that malaria cannot be eliminated without a vaccine,” he writes. “But that does not mean that a vaccine will necessarily eliminate malaria.” Quite.
It’s a great piece. (And not only for this: “All these issues, and many others, are brilliantly exposed in Ms. Shah’s book.”)
Controlling malaria–as opposed to eradicating it, as today’s enthusiasts urge–may be a safer, more sustainable and socially valuable goal, I argue in this op-ed, which appears in today’s New York Times online (and also in the International Herald Tribune). Read it here.
Last week, I spoke with medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein, about malaria, politics, Jeff Sachs, and the future of mosquitoes, in a video interview arranged by Bloggingheads.tv. Randi, whose new book Get Me Out is on the history of childbirth, did her medical school thesis on malaria history, and also wrote a nice review of The Fever. It was great fun talking to her–kind of weird to record it but I think the end result actually works. Here’s the link on this website, and also on Bloggingheads.tv
I read Freakonomics while stranded at an airport for a few hours a couple years ago. Enjoyed it thoroughly. This week, the editor of the New York Times‘ Freakonomics blog will be soliciting questions from readers about “The Fever.” My attempts to expose the freaky ironies and hidden sides of malaria will appear on their blog shortly. Send in your questions to the NYT here.
Here it is–for some reason I’m not able to embed it, but C-SPAN has the video of my Washington DC talk on The Fever in their online video archive.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/294937-
It’s been brought to my attention–by Mark Powell, of Arlington, VA–that I misspoke during the lecture, and said that hundreds of thousands of French workers died of malaria and yellow fever while attempting to build the Panama Canal. My apologies! The figure is the still-shocking tens of thousands of workers. Thankfully, I got it right in the book (page 151 for those of you inclined to check).
If you watch C-Span 2’s “BookTV” program, you’ll find me on the tube talking about The Fever this Sunday, August 22 at 8 pm (and also at 7:30 am on Sunday, and 5 am on Monday). For more info, see their website listing, here. I think they stream the videos on their website, too, so will be posting that shortly as well.
I gave a talk at the wonderful independent bookstore Politics & Prose in Washington, DC last night, to a packed house. It was a great audience which included at least a few malariologists and malaria historians, not to mention a bunch of people who’d survived the disease and were active in the fight against it. I would have loved to have been able to answer more questions–my favorite was one guy who asked me whether I believed in the transmigration of souls (because I had talked about how the malaria parasite is such a shape-shifter). I think he may have been accusing me of being a mosquito in a past life! C-SPAN was there filming the event, so I should be able to post video soon.
Sonia’s latest book: The Next Great Migration
Sonia’s latest story in the New Yorker magazine
Sonia’s latest story in the New York Times Magazine
Sonia on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Sonia on HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, February 15, 2021 episode, "The Next Pandemic"
Ted Talks
"How Unhealthy Paradigms Become Contagious"
"Three Reasons We Still Haven't Got Rid of Malaria"
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