Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Worthwhile Reading as is The Coming Plague
Review: Yes, Laurie Garrett's books are lengthy, but what's does that have to do with the enormously valuable information she imparts to her readers. READ her books over time if you would rather. READ her books while you read another novel but READ them. I did enjoy The Coming Plague more but that was strictly due to my personal interest in that narrow topic. Betrayal of Trust covers Public Health and Medicine and its failings, setbacks, and the immediate future of our health. Betrayal of Trust is the result of her investigation of Public Health worldwide. Ms. Garrett utilizes fascinating examples and historical data to demonstrate among other things that we have a limited community of researchers, doctors, and other health related professionals around the world that try to contain and remedy extremely serious threats and potential threats to our health and well-being. Ms. Garrett sounds a major wake up call that the risk of a major epidemic or health crisis could strike at anytime and that we are absolutely not prepared to tackle the problem (for the many reasons she details throughout the book). We, Americans, go through our days feeling secure that the system is working when that is not reality. To merely say that the unavailability of financial support and treatment resources here and all over the world for containment and prevention of disease is an understatement of vast proportion. The spread of disease is a major problem that accompanies growing mobility of people and the unique illnesses they carry with them to other parts of the world. I wholeheartedly recommend Ms. Garrett's books now and anxiously await her next publication - regardless of the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, an excellent read
Review: `Betrayal of Trust' is an interesting follow-up to Laurie Garrett's first book, `The Coming Plague.' This book brings a journalist's skills to what could otherwise be a somewhat boring topic. It consists of six chapters, each an in-depth examination of a different public health concern. The first chapter investigates the pneumonic plague panic of 1994 in India. The second scrutinizes the Congolese Ebola epidemic of 1995. The third chapter documents the collapse of Soviet/Russian public health, with particular attention to drug-resistant tuberculosis. The fourth (and most controversial) describes the decline of public health efforts in the US under its `managed care' and `medicine for profit' health system. The fifth chapter, titled `Biowar', is the most chilling (especially in light of recent events). And the last, and shortest, chapter is Garrett's epilogue. --- I found it unnerving to re-read the chapter about biological warfare. When I first read it many months ago it was documenting things almost no one (including me!) knew about. Today -- post Anthrax Scare -- most of the chapter is a summary of what `we' (the public) have learned from the experts just in the past few weeks... What makes this book worth reading is that `we' are still in our pre 9-11 stage of knowledge regarding the threats mapped out in her other chapters: drug resistance, virulent TB, tropical disease epidemics, the ever-widening impact of AIDS, the role of organized crime and corruption in the spread of lethal diseases, etc. Though these topics are not pleasant, they will be thrust onto public consciousness in the coming decades. Not without reason, Garrett's book has been compared to `Silent Spring'. Incidentally, be sure to read the hundreds and hundreds of footnotes; they are not as much about documenting sources (though they often do so), as they are about expanding on the text. One thing I will assure you: You can disregard the cover blurb from the Washington Post stating that this book `reads like a Robert Ludlum thriller'; `Betrayal of Trust' is much too full of facts, names, places, and detailed history to be a Ludlum novel - moreover, it is NOT fiction.
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