A review by debs4jc
The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery by D.T. Max

2.0

In sharing the story of an Italian family beset by a strange medical illness that causes insomnia and eventually death, the author also explains the history of that rare class of illness known as prion diseases. Much is still unknown about them, but he goes through the history of how what we do know was discovered. Prion diseases, like scrapie in sheep and mad cow disease in humans and cattle, are caused by a malformed protein. The author explains things pretty well this book does get dry in places. If you are interested in medical stuff or have a personal interest in prion diseases then this book will interest you. Otherwise it might not, but I did find the stuff about mad cow disease a bit frightening, as still so much is unknown about how it is spread, who might be exposed, and there is no cure.