The Family That Couldn't Sleep

A Medical Mystery

By: D.T. Max

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

For 200 years, a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.

What these strange conditions, including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease, share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes "go wrong", resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA. And the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.

In The Family That Couldn't Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion's hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max explains this story's connection to human greed and ambition, from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead nearly wiped them out.

The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinary. They include Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described "pedagogic pedophiliac pediatrician" who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study.

©2006 D.T. Max (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Very timely and compellingly written." (Booklist)

Yawn...!

I wouldn't say this was a terrible book. I would say it was a mediocre book. It was essentially a medical textbook and it read like one. I usually enjoy books about these subjects, but there was something about this book that I just can’t put my finger on that leaves me with this "it's just average" feeling. Yes, I did learn something, which I always enjoy, but you certainly need to pay attention to every single sentence in this book or you will be totally lost. It was very heavy on the science, but not so much that anyone with a decent public education couldn’t absorb. I usually find myself searching online while listening to books like this to learn even more about the subject, but this book just didn’t evoke that kind of interest for me.

The only saving grace is the narration. I think that is the only thing that kept me from returning the book at the halfway point. Grover Gardner made it worth holding out to the end; he’s just that good! I'm debating if I'll listen to this book again to see if my opinion changes?

Ironically, this book has discovered the cure for the Family That Couldn’t Sleep; they just need to listen to this book. Put me to sleep in about 10 minutes every night.

Heart-wrenching medical challenges

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. The story is well researched and written in an engrossing style. Medical mysteries and detective work are as fascinating as any other sort of story, real or fictional. The author, D. T. Max, suffers from one form of misfolded proteins that impair nerve transmission to his muscles. In researching his own little understood condition, Max interviewed members of an Italian family prone to develop fatal insomnia, an even more rare, inherited misfolded protein illness affecting very few families worldwide. Max also studied assorted prion diseases, usually contagious, sometimes possibly not, that have become known to the public in recent decades. Prions are misfolded proteins, similar to the causative problem in the author's syndrome. Prions cause, among other fatal illnesses, the so-called Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD.) This book reveals the difficulty researchers encountered in discerning the causes of these illnesses, the various governments that dealt poorly with reducing spread of contagion by prions, and the totally inadequate efforts that are being made towards treatment and cures.

Who was your favorite character and why?

This is not a book centered on characters, though many fascinating and very special people are described.

Which character – as performed by Grover Gardner – was your favorite?

Again, not pertinent. Gardner's narration was well paced and suited the material.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, even though it is long and there is a great deal of data to absorb. I found the subject matter fascinating.

Any additional comments?

Anyone who likes medical mysteries would enjoy this book. But it is more than a story about discovery. Max's book makes it clear that we all face some degree of risk of contracting a fatal prion-based illness, thanks to the tendency of governments to allow exposure of the population to continue, out of fear of the negative economic impact that might occur or simply out of sheer hubris and denial. Equally alarming is the paucity of research into prevention, treatment and cures, since the number of affected people doesn't appear high enough to provide pharmaceutical companies with the incentive of making a profit. I foresee a time when there will be plenty of sufferers to prompt investment in finding ways to prevent and treat protein misfolding illnesses. That need not happen, if the curative effort is pursued sooner rather than later. I have taken care of two patients who suffered from CJD. Their ends were horrible and tragic. I hope for all our sakes that some intrepid researchers continue the fight against prions and other misfolded protein syndromes, so that our children don't have to deal with the heartbreak of such illness in their lives.

Prion and illnesses

This is an excellent book for those individuals who have diseases for which scientists have not yet found a cure such as Parkinson's disease and any other one caused by the deterioration of proteins. The book is very well-written for the lay person and it is quite entertaining as well.

Fascinating!

This book is a very thorough and informative on the subject of Prion diseases.
I have heard about mad cow and the condition known as Familia Fatal Insomnia but had no idea they were related! The author covered all related conditions very well and the reader did an excellent job! great first book for my Audible subscription!

Great book!

Well paced and scientific. A good deal of jargon and acronyms but that was what I was expecting. More like a history of prion disease with lots of case studies and history.

tragic but amazing story

although this story is told of a tragic and unlucky family. the author does an amazing job at researching the background and making it less about the family and more about understanding prions and the disease.

Very well done!

The reader did an amazing job with this book! It almost felt like a novel a times, partly due to how well the reader did his job. The stories are incredibly compelling and the science is completely accessible and fully explained and very interesting. I cannot imagine a way to die that is more terrible than FFI - the prion related disease that robs victims of their ability to ever fall into sleep. And in the exposition of this disease and its history, is woven the development, history, and scientific exploration of all prion diseases. On top of that, there is a personal feel, as though you are reading the diary or memoir, since the author suffers his own afliction which, for the author, was the motivation for looking into these orphan diseases. If you are not into science/medical stories, this may not appeal... but if you have any interest, this is very, very well done.

Great Book - Made Protein Chemistry Fascinating!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

If you have any interest in science please; please enjoy this book-

Who was your favorite character and why?

The favorite is the saddest-

What does Grover Gardner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The inflection in his voice was perfect for setting the tone and carrying it-

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book is interesting and a bit frightening with the history of animal to human disease transmission

Any additional comments?

I loved reading 'The Disappearing Spoon' and 'The Poisoner's Handbook' and this book feels a little bit like that-

Strays from The Main Title

Good book but is more about prion diseases than focusing on what the title states.

Great book

Any one with a family member with a disability that is neurological in origin will appreciate this book. The author's final chapter says it all. Great narrator.