His Brother's Keeper: One Family's Journey to the Edge of Medicine

Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS — Lou Gehrig's disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable. His Brother's Keeper is a powerful account of their story, as they travel together to the edge of medicine.

The book brings home for all of us the hopes and fears of the new biology. In this dramatic and suspenseful narrative, Jonathan Weiner gives us a remarkable portrait of science and medicine today. We learn about gene therapy, stem cells, brain vaccines, and other novel treatments for such nerve-death diseases as ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's — diseases that afflict millions, and touch the lives of many more.

"The Heywoods' story taught me many things about the nature of healing in the new millennium," Weiner writes. "They also taught me about what has not changed since the time of the ancients and may never change as long as there are human beings — about what Lucretius calls 'the ever-living wound of love.'"This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Beak of the Finch" comes a book about the new biology and how it touches a defiant family-in-crisis fighting an incurable disease.

Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS — Lou Gehrig's disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable. His Brother's Keeperis a powerful account of their story, as they travel together to the edge of medicine.

The book brings home for all of us the hopes and fears of the new biology. In this dramatic and suspenseful narrative, Jonathan Weiner gives us a remarkable portrait of science and medicine today. We learn about gene therapy, stem cells, brain vaccines, and other novel treatments for such nerve-death diseases as ALS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's — diseases that afflict millions, and touch the lives of many more.

"The Heywoods' story taught me many things about the nature of healing in the new millennium," Weiner writes. "They also taught me about what has not changed since the time of the ancients and may never change as long as there are human beings — about what Lucretius calls 'the ever-living wound of love.'"This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Jonathan Weiner's books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize, and many other honors. While working on His Brother's Keeper, he was writer-in-residence at Rockefeller University. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and their two sons.