Ed JC Sterling, SK Tyring. Pp 153; £65.00. London: Arnold Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-340-74215-1.

Most of us have had an encounter with warts at some time in our lives. We try to freeze, poison, or corrode them, occasionally resorting to surgery, laser vaporisation and, latterly, immunotherapy. Our modest success at treatment only underscores the general public’s perception that warts are a common but incurable nuisance. All this trouble from a family of viruses with a host range that spans the animal kingdom and an astonishing spectrum of disease manifestations. The development and subsequent exploitation of increasingly sophisticated molecular techniques over the past …