Hot on the Virus Trail

By K.T. McGuire

The Coming Plague
Newly emerging diseases in a world out of Balance
Laurie Garrett
750pp Farrar Strauss & Giroux

Whereas Mr. Preston's best seller "The Hot Zone" can be read strictly for its entertainment value, focusing on the specific event of a potentially lethal outbreak of Ebola virus, Laurie Garrett has written a definitive tome on emerging diseases and viruses.

In her fastidiously researched book Ms. Grant takes us on a guided tour of the last fifty years of microbes, and the men and women who have done battle against them. As a matter of fact, many of the characters from "The Hot Zone " appear in Ms. Garrett's book, although in another context. For example, Karl Johnson one of the discoverers of Ebola virus, is portrayed here in the early days of his career, a young research physician who survived a near death experience from Machupo virus and becomes a Bolivian hero. Although the Coming Plague lacks the quick paced novelistic style of The Hot Zone, it is nevertheless compelling for its shear breath and scope of detailed information.

We learn that long gone are the "happy days" of the fifties and sixties, when modern medicine believed it had the beastly microbes well under control. Although great strides were made against diseases of polio and smallpox, it appears that the optimism of the medical community has been greatly diminished amidst the cunning resilience of many "old'" viruses such as T.B., which kills three million people a year, end the emergence of new ones such as Aids, hantavirus, and Legionaires''.

In her work Ms. Grant reveals many of the conditions that have created and promoted the spread and mutation of new viruses. In a time of extreme overcrowding in major cities, massive refugee migrations, and the emergence of the 'global village" approach to world trade and travel a "critical mass" has been reached that has created an ideal environment for the proliferation and mutation of disease.

William McNeill, historian from the University of Chicago opined, that each catastrophic epidemic event in human history was the ironic result of humanity's step forward. He is quoted by Ms. Grant, ÒIt is worth keeping in mind that the more we win, the more we drive infections to the margins of human experience , the more we clear a path for possible catastrophic infection. We'll never escape the limits of the ecosystem...". Ms. Grant believes that ill-planned development schemes, misguided medicine, errant public health, and shortsighted political action/inaction are some of the ways humans are actually aiding and abetting disease and that humanity must change its perspective on its place in the Earth's ecology if the species hopes to stave off or survive the next plague, otherwise the future looms darkly.

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