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Summary: The Demon in the Freezer book review
Review: I really liked the book. As a fan of Richard Preston's books, I very much so enjoyed The Demon in the Freezer. Although it wasn't on the same level as The Hot Zone, I still found myself unable to put it down until the very end.
If you have read The Hot Zone and enjoyed that, you will most likely enjoy this book as well. I highly recommend it to anyone. And if you like this book I also suggest The Cobra Event.
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Summary: Smallpox non-fiction thriller!
Review: A fascinating treatise on smallpox, including its history and recent emergence as the virus of choice for bioterrorists. Smallpox came into existance only as human population densities swelled. In the late 18th century, Edward Jenner made history by performing the first successful smallpox vaccination. In the centuries that followed, humanity waged war against smallpox, and it was ostensibly eradicated from nature in the late seventies. It seems that mankind was too enamored with smallpox to destroy it completely, however, and it lives on in freezers around the world. "The Hot Zone", by the same author, made me paranoid about the ebola virus. Having finished this book, I know now that ebola is child's play compared to smallpox. "Demon" is full of loads of details about the biomedical industry, including a survey of modern practices, tools, techniques, and prominent players. The book is all the more terrifying given its non-fiction status. A must read for anybody interested in infectious diseases, smallpox, or bioweapons programs.
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Summary: Fascinating and Terrifying
Review: As a fan of medical mysteries, adventures, and horrors, I find none as terrifying as those based on fact. Richard Preston came through again with one of the most fascinating and thought provoking books I have read in a long time. I was not sure what to expect, as I had bought the book some time ago. When it started with a revisit of 9/11 and the anthrax scare, I was fairly disappointed, as I was looking for something along the lines of Ebola or the other hemmoragic fevers. However, the book quickly did a history of the team charged with erradicating smallpox, their trials, triumphs, and I was just blown away. Call me odd for being fascinated by smallpox, and other books of this sort, but when one realizes that these diseases occurred, real people died, and real people sought and sometimes found a cure, nothing can make for more interesting reading. I recommend all Preston and Preston/Child collaborations as 'intelligent' reading.
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Summary: A chilling and relevant look at bioweapons
Review: Demon in the Freezer is a chilling but important glimpse into the world of bioweapons. In the third book of his Dark Biology trilogy, Preston examines the histories of and threats presented by Anthrax and Smallpox. He writes in a style similar to that of the Hot Zone, breaking chapters into short vignettes that feature the people who work with these dangerous viruses.
Preston specifically examines the Anthrax attacks following September 11th and the possibility of smallpox being used as a biological weapon. He also traces the history of the eradication of smallpox and examines which countries might possess rogue samples of the virus. His writing remains detached, without falling into the trap of him presenting an apocalyptical world view. Instead Preston allows his interview subjects to voice their concern for him.
Like the Hot Zone, this book reads like a suspense novel and is made even more frightening because it is real. This is a great, entirely readable non-fiction thriller.
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Summary: Not great, but decent
Review: Demon in the Freezer is an interesting book about the history of smallpox and other ills of mankind. It does a good job of describing current biocontainment technology and other designs for biological weapons and the history of the U.S. - U.S.S.R. conflict that brought some of these weapons into being. Demon in the Freezer does fall a bit short in having a lot of characters (I began to lose track of them) and also tries unsuccessfully to be a "doomsday" kind of book. I finished reading this pleased with the amount that I had learned about smallpox, biocontainment, etc., but don't especially worry more about a smallpox epidemic than before. Demon in the Freezer paints of picture of a smallpox outbreak being so random and uncontrollable it is like worrying about being hit by an asteroid. There would be nothing that you could do so why worry? Other than that flaw, Demon in the Freezer is a good interesting factual book and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
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Summary: Fantastic
Review: Great book by Richard Preston. The information contained is fascinating, frightening and informative. A great book - and a quick read.
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Summary: Updated account of bioweapons
Review: Richard Preston agains succeeds in scaring the heck out of us with his probing unveiling of the status of current day bioweapons. Preston begins his book with an explanation of the symptomology of what he considers the most lethal bioweapon available today, smallpox. Contagion with the smallpox virus is manifested in a variety of terrifying symptoms which in a high percentage of cases leads to the death of the host. Scientists tirelessly working through the World Health Organization eradicated smallpox from the world in 1979. Supposedly only 2 stores of the disease remained in the freezers of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and an analogous location in Siberia. Shockingly it has become apparent that the Russian cache had been distributed to sources that advocate terrorism. Even more disturbing was the belief that genetic engineers were introducing genetic material into the smallpox to make it more lethal by making it resistant to vaccines. Preston also chronicles the high levels of governmental security that existed against bioterrorism after 9/11. He enlightens us about the anthrax attack our country suffered when pure spores of weapon grade anthrax was mailed to various locations throughout the country. One particularly famous letter was mailed to Senator Tom Daschle and was confiscated for analysis. Preston called this episode Amerithrax. What unfortunately became crystal clear is that experimentation and use of bioweapons is a tragic reality that we face in the future. We can only hope that governments are wise enough to take measures to control these threats to our very existence.
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Summary: Frightening
Review: Richard Preston has written a frightening book. Starting and ending with the Anthrax attacks on the United States. Preston has talked to many of the top bioweapons engineers in the world and his research shows in this outstanding book. Full of information from accross the world. The history of Smallpox, the eradication effort by the World Health Organization. The background on Anthrax. Side stories to Ebola. The most dangerous virus's in the world are addressed in this book. The book examines the threat of Smallpox and explains why most people in the know about infectious disease's still consider it the worst the world has ever seen, even worse than plague. The book touches on Biopreparat (for a more in depth look read Biohazard by Ken Alibek) and the Russian stockpiles of Smallpox that they have weaponized and put into missiles to attack other countries. The CDC, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta still holds over 450 different strains of Smallpox. The book goes on to explain how many countries have Smallpox and this is not a little known fact. How genetic engineering could easily make Smallpox harder to contain than it already is. In today's world travel a Smallpox outbreak would mean hundreds of thousands of deaths and it would shut down international trade. it would bring the world to its knees. With 25 million people living within a couple hours travel of one another an outbreak in a third world county could show up in the United States in a few days. And this is not taking into account the possibility of a direct bioweapons attack on the United States. Before it was diagnosed, it would be spread around the world by air travel. This book is well written, reads easily, is full of information and very thought provoking. It was so engrossing that I started ready one night and did not want to put it down. I finished it the next afternoon. For a better understanding of what the world is facing today you should read this book. Smallpox is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than a nuclear war. Nuclear devastation is confined to the area of the bomb. Smallpox would travel person to person throughout the world. In a word, the information in this book is, frightening.
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Summary: A Chilling Mastery, A Horrific Threat...
Review: Since I initially read and reviewed THE DEMON IN THE FREEZER back in November 2002, the specter of war in Iraq has continued to spotlight just how prophetic Preston's work is. Yet, as I've mentioned in radio and television interviews on my own novel of bioterrorism, the untold story of this horrific subject remains the distinct possibility that the current smallpox vaccine may not be effective against the bioengineered strain of variola most likely in the hands of rogue nations and, potentially, terrorist groups. We are indeed in danger of experienceing the final epidemic. This, despite the fact that Richard Preston detailed the danger of an engineered smallpox strain (most likely, a legacy of the massive Soviet bioweapon program) in DEMON. In the eleven months I spent researching my novel of bioterrorism, ..., I interviewed dozens of experts in biological weapons, terrorism and medicine. And everywhere I went, I found myself following the footprints of Richard Preston, whose knowledge and professionalism sets the standard in writing about this dark subject. Preston's a hard act to follow-- particularly so because his latest book, The Demon In The Freezer, is all so terribly true. Written in an episodic style, the book has the feel of a journal, albeit one written by a man quietly horrified by the revelations he records. The book centers around the high probability --so high as to constitute a virtual certainity-- of what itself is a horrifying fact: that the variola virus --smallpox, history's greatest mass murderer of humanity-- has come back from its official eradication as a disease in the mid-'70s to emerge today as a biological weapon possessed by a number of rogue states (most likely among them, Iraq) and potentially accessable to fanatical terrorists driven by a hatred of Western society. Preston builds his case through a narrative based on interviews with experts --perhaps the most disturbing, an almost pastoral description of a meeting between Ken Alibeck (who defected from the Soviet bioweapon program, which produced weaponized smallpox by the metric ton and for whom Alibeck invented a particularly lethal variant of anthrax) and former U.S. biowarrior Bill Patrick at the latter's Maryland home. Here, Preston records how the pair chat about mega-death and the ease of bioweapon delivery, even to the point of Patrick using a mundane garden sprayer to send a plume of simulated bio-agent into the gentle breeze, which he posits will carry it to a major urban center within hours. In my other reviews on this subject (Alibeck's BIOHAZARD, for instance) I've already expressed my jaw-dropping astonishment at the appallingly casual attitude so often in evidence among the former high priests of biowarfare. Never has it been portrayed so revealingly as it is in Preston's account. But anthrax, lethal though it may be, is incapable of human-to-human contagion; as such, it becomes only a subnote in "Demon." Always, Preston returns to the real threat: the virtual certainity that a genetically-engineered version of smallpox has been developed-- a variant that is unaffected by any existing vaccine and which has been further tweaked to enhance its ability to kill. Not only does Preston tell us how this viral monster has probably been created, he lets us follow him to a modest laboratory. Here, a bio-geneticist allows Preston to participate in an almost-identical gene-splicing process involving mousepox virus, a cousin of smallpox. A reasonably bright high-school student could do the same, if he had access to mousepox... or smallpox. The genie has indeed escaped the bottle, and awaits only a monster to make the first wish to bring on the Final Epidemic of our nightmares. "The Demon In The Freezer" recounts a mounting litany of horror, phrased in Preston's always calm style, and includes the author's own reaction to such events as the World Trade Center attacks, the subsequent anthrax-in-the-mail terrorism, even to today's probability of war in Iraq. And then the book ends, as abruptly as a sharp intake of breath. Wisely, Preston does not attempt a profound summation, for he had already known what his readers now realize. Doomsday viruses are in the hands of the ruthless and possibly the insane; the survival of humanity teeters in tentative balance. As we wait, in a justified fear Preston has documented so well. --Earl Merkel
Author
Rating:
Summary: The Good Outweighs the Bad
Review: The Demon in the Freezer is an excellent book about the eradication of smallpox, and the history of Soviet biowarfare. The information is presented in the context of the October 2001 Anthrax attacks. There are definitely more comprehensive books on those subjects, but Preston's strength has always been his ability to blend the personal and scientific sides of an issue. The only reason why I cannot give this book 5 stars is because, like The Hot Zone, Preston is alarmist and sensationalist at the end. I understand that creating a feeling of fear helps the lay reader through the material, but Preston's substitution of fear for analysis, especially at the end of the book, just slightly cheapen book as a whole. Richard Preston is an excellent author and I highly recommend this book. It is a joy to read and it is a very good introduction to smallpox and biowarfare. However, don't feel like you need to go and get vaccinated and fitted for a gas mask.
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