Dimensions
155 x 234 x 23mm
From the author of 'The Hot Zone'.
The first major bioterror event in the United States - the anthrax attacks in October 2001 - was a call for scientists who work with "hot" agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In this book, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the US biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.
Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at USAMRIID, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox - and win.
Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers - at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose.
It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.
USAMRIID went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington DC. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government’s response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr Steven Hatfill.
Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is re-awakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails.
"One of the most horrifying things I've ever read. What a remarkable piece of work." - Stephen King
"Popular science writing at its best and the year's most infectious page-turner." - 'People'
"A top-drawer horror story . . . the best literary roller coaster of the fall." - 'Newsweek'
