Adventures of a Female Medical Detective
In Pursuit of Smallpox and AIDS
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"A rip-roaring read."ā Nature
Fresh out of college in the 1960s, Mary Guinan aspired to be an astronautāuntil she learned that NASA's astronaut program wasn't recruiting women. Instead, Guinan went to medical school and became a disease detective with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epidemic Intelligence Service. Selected to join India's Smallpox Eradication program, Guinan traveled to remote villages to isolate smallpox cases and then vaccinate all uninfected persons within a ten-mile radius. By May 1975, the World Health Organization declared Uttar Pradesh smallpox-free.
During her barrier-breaking career, Dr. Guinan met arms-seeking Afghan insurgents in Pakistan and got caught in the crossfire between religious groups in Lebanon. She was one of the first medical detectives on the ground in San Francisco at the start of the AIDS crisis. And she served as an expert witness in a landmark decision that still protects HIV patients from workplace discrimination. Randy Shilts's best-selling book on the epidemic, And the Band Played On, features her AIDS work, as does the HBO movie of the same name.
In Adventures of a Female Medical Detective, Guinan weaves together twelve vivid stories of her life in medicine, describing her individual experiences in controlling outbreaks, researching new diseases, and caring for patients the world over. Occasionally heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, Guinan's account of her pathbreaking career will inspire public health students and future medical detectivesāand give all readers insight into that part of the government exclusively devoted to protecting their health.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Adventures of a Female Medical Detective
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- ONE My First Outbreak Investigation
- TWO Something to Believe In: Operation Smallpox Zero
- THREE A Gift of an Elephant
- FOUR Dr. Herpes
- FIVE Healthcare Workers and Enemy Information in a War Zone, Pakistan, 1980
- SIX An AIDS Needlestick at a Rundown Hotel in San Francisco, 1982
- SEVEN ACT UP Acts Up at CDC over the Definition of AIDS for Women
- EIGHT The HIV-Infected Preacherās Wife
- NINE Few Safe Places
- TEN Expert Witness for John Doe, the Pharmacist, 1991
- ELEVEN The Milk Industry Challenges CDC over the Source of a Listeriosis Outbreak
- TWELVE On Getting AIDS from a Toilet Seat and Other STD Myths and Taboos
- References
- Index
- Footnote