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Title: Germs : Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William J. Broad ISBN: 0-684-87158-0 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.24 (87 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Good, doesn't go far enough though
Comment: This book's largest contribution, I think, is the meticulous way that it documents how most scientists don't belong in the room assessing threats and intelligence any more than one should turn to them for business strategy.
Scientists, by training and temperament, are usually people who will argue that the sky isn't blue, and won't believe anything until it is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even then, they maintain skepticism. It's their profession to do so. What is worse, they tend to have an overweening self confidence and certainty.
The activity and conclusions of Meselson in particular, in convincing the DOD and presidents that biological weapons were not being worked on, is a case history that should give leaders pause. Very well meaning, having learned a specific way of arriving at scientific truth by painstaking repeated experiment and results, he was utterly and completely wrong, and incapable of understanding his limitations or lack of fitness for the role that he grabbed for himself in determining policy.
I can say that this is the achilles heel of the scientific community of advisers. Scientists are, with rare exceptions, thought followers, not leaders, and unable to project the knowledge they establish forward. If this were not true, scientists would be almost universally wealthy, and excellent inventors and engineers. But who invented the personal computer? Who invented thousands of other things and took them forward? Who understands disruptive technologies, scientists or venture capitalists?
The reason I say that this book doesn't go far enough is that even people like Lederer, who also mean very well, and have worked so hard to stop genetic engineering being used for weapons, are UTTERLY out of their MINDS and extremely dangerous to you and I. They have backed us into a corner with biological weapons; a corner which we are quite likely to all die in. I kid you not.
Why do I say this? Because it is the sheerest academic hubris to think that high level scientists are required to invent new biological weapons. As a matter of fact, scientists, in general, are the least qualified to invent such things. They have little interest in it, they don't tend to engineering creativity. The computer profession has learned this very well. PhD and MS degrees in computer science are if little value in the real world as a rule. Anyone at all can work on computer viruses, or software to do anything one might like. All they need is tools and manuals. Microsoft was not built by employing PhDs folks. PhD computer scientists have contributed very little to the software profession beyond the invention of the basic electronics and concept.
Genetic engineering, as the technology becomes more disseminated and more automated, becomes more and more of a computer exercise. Like the software profession, genetic engineering innovations will follow as this knowledge dissemination explodes outward which the academic crowd will have trouble simply tracking.
Since these scientists do not have a lock on this knowledge, and since the technology is not terribly expensive, how could anyone in their right mind think that they could control the development of biological weapons simply by legislating them out of the US military budget? For god's sake, that is farcical! And yet - that is what we have done.
That means that had Lederer and others actually thought the matter through, they would have realized that every effort to block the development of biological weapons by nations did NOTHING except raising our vulnerability to biological weapons.
All we have done is to stick our head in the sand collectively. So we have arrived, right now, at a juncture where such weapons can be conceived and produced by anyone who cares to learn the technology. And nobody seems to realize it!
We are like a people who, having discovered gunpowder, have decided that we will only allow anyone to even think about using it for firecrackers. Meanwhile, the barbarians are out there, and they are inventing guns. We, congratulating ourselves on what good guys we are, are spending all our energy developing and defending against bows, arrows, spears and swords. It's obvious to a dimwit who is going to win in a biological war if the barbarians do their homework right.
You should be far more frightened than you are. Nobody takes this seriously enough.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting but not Harrowing
Comment: "Germs" covers the recent history of biological warfare as well as may be expected, given the extremely secretive nature of the subject. It sheds light on the fact that America is very unprepared for a massive biological attack, yet at the same time is not likely to experience one. While small-scale attacks are possible and maybe even likely to occur, the fact is that they are not likely to succeed to any great extent due to the difficulty of creating a bug that is sufficiently virulent and able to survive on its own outside of the lab. Certainly more can and should be done to prevent and/or contain any such attacks, but at the same time, people should not be losing much sleep over it.
Probably the most interesting thing about this book is the level of paranoia and moral superiority displayed by the American government. They spent so much time and money scrutinizing the Soviet Union, sure that they were violating the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972, even after the collapse of the Union. And of course, the soviets were doing just that and even admitted to it. But the level of moral superiority is just disgusting, as the U.S. was just as guilty as they were, probably even more guilty than the book leads one to believe.
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Account
Comment: I read this book for the purpose of gaining an understanding of the dangers of bio-terrorism and wanted to be more informed on national preparedness to this threat. This book was well written, well researched, balanced, and informative. It showed the increasing importance bio-terrorism is playing on public decisions. The first part of the book gives a little history of germ warfare already instigated by radical terrorist groups, and the role it played in the Cold War. In more recent history, concerns about possible germ warfare and/or bio terrorist attacks led to certain actions in the era of Desert Storm. I would have desired the book progress from giving an excellent historical account to explaining the current public debate, Is there protection to be afforded by spending money on public health measures ? Is protection feasible given the variety of microbes that can be created in a world where gene splicing is becoming commonplace? Is a good defense possible in the future?
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Title: Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It by Stephen Handelman, Ken Alibek ISBN: 0385334966 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 11 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story by Richard Preston ISBN: 0375508562 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Plague Wars : The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare by Tom Mangold, Jeff Goldberg ISBN: 0312263791 Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 17 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe by John Schwartz, M.P.H. Michael T. Osterholm Phd. ISBN: 0385334818 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Biology of Doom : America's Secret Germ Warfare Project by Ed Regis ISBN: 080505765X Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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