Gina Kolata Bücher

Kaum eine Seuche wütete in so kurzer Zeit so heftig wie die Grippe-Epidemie von 1918. Weltweit erkrankten 700 Millionen Menschen, in nur wenigen Monaten forderte sie über 20 Millionen Tote - mehr als der Erste Weltkrieg Menschenleben gekostet hatte. Kein Land, kein Kontinent blieb verschont von der tödlichen Viruserkrankung: In Europa, den USA, in Indien, selbst in der kleinsten Eskimosiedlung forderte sie ihre Opfer. Umso erstaunlicher ist es, dass diese Katastrophe scheinbar völlig in Vergessenheit geriet. Erst Ende der neunziger Jahre machten sich Forscher auf die Suche nach dem Erreger der tödlichen Influenza, um herauszufinden, warum er so aggressiv war und wie man zukünftige Epidemien verhindern könnte. In Labors und Archiven begann ein spannender Wettlauf um die Erforschung des tödlichen Virus. Gina Kolata ist ein packender Thriller über einen der rätselhaftesten Fälle der Medizingeschichte und zugleich eine kenntnisreiche Darstellung der modernen Virenforschung gelungen, deren Bedeutung in einem Zeitalter neuer Viruserkrankungen aktueller ist denn je.

Im Februar 1997 ging eine sensationelle Nachricht um die Welt: Der amerikanische Embryologe Ian Wilmut hatte ein erwachsenes Säugetier geklont, das Schaf Dolly "geschaffen". Die Vorstellung, das Experiment könnte mit menschlichen Genen wiederholt werden, erregt seither die Gemüter. Gina Kolata, Mathematikerin und Molekularbiologin, gehört zu den wenigen, die Wilmut frühzeitig in sein Experiment einweihte. In ihrem Buch dokumentiert sie die zehnjährige Forschungsarbeit des Wissenschaftlers und gleichzeitig die Entwicklung der Gentechnik.

Provocative and engaging, this collection brings together the premiere science writing of the year. Featuring the imprimatur of bestselling author and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata, one of the nation's foremost voices in science and medicine, and with contributions from Atul Gawande, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Oliver Sacks, among others, The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a compelling anthology of our most advanced, and most relevant, scientific inquiries.

New York Times science reporter Gina Kolata follows a family through genetic illness and one courageous daughter who decides her fate shall no longer be decided by a genetic flaw. The phone rings. The doctor from California is on the line. "Are you ready Amanda?" The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested--at least, not now. But she had to find out. If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold a brutal illness and you were offered the chance to find out if you'd inherited it, would you do it? Would you walk toward the problem, bravely accepting whatever answer came your way? Or would you avoid the potential bad news as long as possible? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution--not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma--fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process. A work of narrative nonfiction, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It's a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman--Amanda Baxley--who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family's destiny