"Doctors later discovered that Stephen had succumbed to a new kind of killer, the prion, now known to be the cause of mad cow disease in cattle, chronic wasting disease in American deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and fatal insomnia, among other exotic ailments, in humans. Doctors and researchers have been aware of some of these diseases for a century and more, but only in the last two decades have scientists even begun to understand just how the "pathological protein" spreads to new species and invariably kills its victims." "In this book, Philip Yam describes the history of the scientific effort to track down and understand the prion, and the medical effort, still underway, to devise treatments for those who suffer from its ravages."--BOOK JACKET.
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