THE FAMILY THAT COULDN'T SLEEP A Medical Mystery

Recently discovered organisms called prions cause diseases, but they're neither viruses, bacteria, fungi, nor parasites. Nor are they well understood. Grover Gardner's narration makes this story of one fatal neurodegenerative prion disease eerily understandable. In his delivery what might have been a dry recital of medical immunology becomes the real-life horror story of a Venetian family that has suffered for two hundred years from this inherited prion disease. Gardner's masterful use of inflection intensifies the horror of prion diseases and drives the listener to consider how we humans may be creating our own demise through our engineering of food. When suggesting that diseases in which brain cells are destroyed and the nervous system deteriorates, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, might be prion diseases, Gardner speaks tentatively and yet hopefully that someday cures will be discovered. K.A.T. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 07]