Review by Booklist Review
Science journalist Orent's sweeping history of Yersinia pestis begins and ends in Russia. As the Soviet Union, Russia ran the world's largest bioweapons program, concentrated on making plague more virulent and more invincible to antiplague agents. The U.S., which ended bioweapons research during the Nixon administration, doesn't take plague as seriously as Russia but hasn't had Russia's experience with it. Plague's homeland is Mongolia and the adjacent north and west; it spread through Asia to Europe and Africa from there, and there it still flares, killing entire families and tiny communities before the most effective plague prophylaxis, quarantine, contains it. Three times plague waxed pandemic, and Orent charts its course and effects under the sixth-century Byzantine emperor Justinian, whose attempted revival of the Roman empire it quashed; in the mid-fourteenth century, devastating Europe before subsiding in waves extending to the eighteenth century; and in 1894 to 1920, especially in China, during which investigators discovered much of what is definitely known about it. Later the key to plague's dangerousness was ascertained: it disarms immune response. By the time its victim feels sick, the liver, spleen, and lymph glands . . . are tissues of plague, plague bacteria in almost pure culture. Back at last to Russia, where, more than any stockpiled plague weapons, by now probably impotent, the knowledge of former bioweapons scientists is very much on the market. Be afraid, and remember quarantine. --Ray Olson Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As journalist Orent shows, what is called the plague-a killer of millions throughout the centuries-is several different diseases, some spread by animals, others by humans. Luckily, the Black Death, as the plague was called in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, "never became a permanent human specialist, like smallpox," in part, she surmises, because it was too virulent to survive for long. But when Orent moves on to the present and future of the plague, she's treading on uncertain ground. With the help of a former Soviet bioweapons scientist, Igor Domaradskij, whose memoirs she's edited, she throws the spotlight on the Soviet development of strains of the plague. The frightening thing, she notes, is that some of these strains can no longer be accounted for. Whether or not that is something that should be feared is unclear: American experts she quotes argue that these viruses are no longer major threats to create an epidemic. But she contends that while not as deadly as anthrax, the strains of the plague created in the former Soviet Union-or other strains of the disease that might be antibiotic resistant-are indeed something to worry about. Not so long ago, a book like this might have seemed like fear mongering. In the post-September 11 world, a plague outbreak may still be unlikely, but many readers will find this a subject deserving further investigation. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Vivid recounting of past outbreaks of plague, coupled with ominous predictions of man-made ones that may lie ahead. Science journalist Orent, who worked on the English version of Igor Domaradskij's memoir Biowarrior (not reviewed), opens with a visit to Obolensk, site of the lab where Domaradskij claims to have worked on turning plague and other diseases into biological weapons. His former colleague Lev Melnikov tells the author that her job is to scare the American public, to make them see the danger posed by genetically altered plague germs. Pursuing that goal with vigor, Orent argues here that while there is no proof that a highly lethal, vaccine- and antibiotic-resistant plague weapon has ever been made, the technology may now exist to produce it. She reports on what scientists currently know about the different forms of plague and the ways it is spread across species and from person to person. To familiarize readers with its horrors, she focuses on three great pandemics: the Justinian Plague of the sixth century, the medieval Black Death, and the early-20th century's Third Pandemic, primarily in India and China. While records of the Justinian Plague are comparatively scanty, contemporary accounts of the Black Death illustrate the panic it created and the devastation that it wrought across Europe. (Of special interest are Orent's descriptions of public health measures taken by Italian city-states.) Not until the Third Pandemic did researchers begin to unravel the disease's mysteries, identifying the plague bacillus and discovering the connection among rodents, fleas, and humans. Natural plague can now be controlled through careful monitoring, medical treatment, and quarantine, but weaponized, genetically engineered plague remains a possibility, she argues. If we are to believe her Russian scientists, the seed strains still exist, and so does the scientific knowledge to turn plague into a bioweapon that could turn up in the hands of terrorists. Though hedged with qualifiers, Orent's message is chilling, and her stories of previous epidemics make palpable the enormity of the threat. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
