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Title: Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox by Jonathan B. Tucker ISBN: 0-8021-3939-6 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.84 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Completely absorbing
Comment: Mr. Tucker has written a highly readable account of one of the great killers of human history. Starting with background on smallpox: the course of the disease, its effect on humnan history, its use as a biological weapon, and moving through to the early work of Jenner in the field of vaccination, and the awe-inspiring triumph of the campaign to eradicate this terrible disease, this riveting account paints a portrait of one the great public health achievements of the 20th, or any, century. From that high point, the author then goes on to describe the hideous betrayal of that achievement by the very people who had first proposed undertaking the eradication of smallpox: the former Soviet Union. He lays out the Soviet bioweapons program that secretly kept the virus alive and kicking, and the Soviets' attempts to combine the virus with other viruses to create an even more powerful bug. Given recent events, this book's timing and message could not be better. Scourge is not an alarmist book, rather, a sobering one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent and timely
Comment: This is an extraordinary and timely book. Published this year before the 11 Sept. calamities, it deals with the history of smallpox, the development of immunization, the slow and heroic elimination of smallpox,the secret and evil experiments in the Soviet Union with smallpox virus as a biological weapon in the 1980s and after, and then with the implications of terrorist induced reintroduction of smallpox. The author shows how it is likely that Iraq has the virus, although it was supposed to be held in strict isolation in two labs in the world only after the disease was finally wiped out in 1982.
Well written, concise, and chilling. I am surprised that copies are still readily available.
Rating: 5
Summary: Different viewpoint of the same problem.
Comment: I just recently finish Preston's book 'The Demon in the Freezer'. You would think that would fulfill my appetite for knowledge concerning smallpox, right? But that particular book and this one, Scourge, are very different. While Preston writes for the masses, often in a very novelistic, suspenseful way to bring information concerning microbial dangers to everyone, this particular book is more for those whose interests and avocations and jobs lie in these fields. This does not mean the book is written boringly. Both books deserved the five stars for different reasons. 'Demon...' was exciting and horrifying in it's details concerning smallpox, this book brings to life the unfortunate politics played behind the scenes by physicians, by government entities such as the Defense Department, by politicians who do not understand the full implications of most biological and bioethical discussions, by entire countries (U.S. and Russia the worst as per usual).
Though Tucker and Preston mention a few names and incidents in common in their books, their writing is very different. Tucker is deeply involved in bioweapons development as a member of an elite group that monitors this type of problem internationally. Preston writes like a journalist. So the impact of their writing is completely different and I personally think anyone interested in this problem is well-served by reading both books.
Scourge tells the story of the political problems not only in eradicating the smallpox worldwide, but the current problem concerning the existence of stocks at the CDC and VEctor, and whether they should be destroyed. Tucker goes into far more detail concerning the problems in India and Bangladesh that made that country one of the last to contain smallpox (and bodes ill should smallpox ever raises its head there again). He also goes into much more detail concerning Russia's two-faced behavior in supplying the world with the vaccine that led to eradication, but in secret continuing to work on smallpox and genetic variations in order to have them for biological weaponry.
Tucker also gives a good warning at the end chapter, that while the ability to use smallpox as a weapon is more difficult then imagined, the possibility of using it still exists. He emphasizes that panic does not contribute anything useful, but awareness and preparation for the possibility does. I am glad that the smallpox vaccinations are there, and I think more physicians and other medical personnel should be prepared for seeing these cases, and being able to differentiate between smallpox, flu, and chickenpox.
Karen Sadler,
Science Education
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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 by RICHARD PRESTON ISBN: 0345466632 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by William Broad, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg ISBN: 0684871599 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History, With a New Introduction by Donald R. Hopkins ISBN: 0226351688 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Cobra Event by Richard Preston ISBN: 0345409973 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 29 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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