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Summary: Advantage: Microbe
Review: "The Coming Plague" is 620 pages of densely-packed text on humanity's war against its deadliest enemies. Throughout the twentieth century and into the new millenium, we've given our microscopic enemies glorious new opportunities to exploit us, whether it be through war, slash-and-burn agriculture, or stagnant water in an air-conditioning system. Laurie Garrett has written a fascinating and frightening account of some of the battles we almost won (measles and polio) and some where we appear to be in full retreat (AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis). Her book is especially compulsive reading when she describes the individual skirmishes in the war, e.g. a journey into the African bush to identify and treat a disease that was killing 80% of its victims, or the discovery that cholera vibrio could live inside of algae and didn't require person-to-person transmission. Even if you live in the middle of the Canadian tundra and have sworn off eating mollusks for the rest of your life, this book hammers home the fact that you're still not safe from what used to be called 'Third World diseases'. Even as I write this review, there is a woman in an isolation chamber of a hospital in Hampton, Ontario who is gravely ill with an unknown hemorrhagic fever. The doctors don't think its Ebola Fever, but they're not sure what it is, or whether any of the other passengers on the plane from Nigeria to Canada could also have been infected. You can conclude (as I did) from "The Coming Plague" that many of us who expected to die from age-related conditions such as heart failure or cancer, may now well perish from infection. This book manages to combine the heroics of "Men against Death", the grim prophecy of "Silent Spring", and descriptions of several hair-raising, near-tragedies akin to the "Hot Zone". I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Another hit for Laurie Garrett - as good as Betrayal of Trust. Very scary information wrapped in a most intriguing package.
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Summary: Everything you need to know up to '95
Review: Beautiful narrative style. Shows the history and the politics behind some of the most deadly "bugs" out there. Want to know about the diseases up to 1995,then this is it. Huge notes section with indepth index. All this packed into 750 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Good information buried in a bunch liberal crap.
Review: Garrett presents much very interesting information about some of the most deadly diseases in the world, like Machupo and Lassa fever. There are fantastic accounts of how these diseases have been tracked to their sources, or attempted to be tracked to their sources, and how they have been combated thus far. The point is quite well made that these threats are still looming on the horizon and humanity will need to be continually finding more effective ways of control. However, along with all the true accounts and bits of scientific relevance is a running liberal commentary, which is to be expected from somebody with ties to Harvard, I guess. It slows down the narrative with its inevitable logical contradictions, especially when dealing with the AIDS issue and "alternative lifestyles"--homosexuality is shown to be one of the major causes of the spread of AIDS, yet the problem is not homosexuality, but ineffective control measures...hmmmm (and somehow, even things like States' rights get brought in). The book is at times exciting and frightening, but you have to be able to stomach a large dose of liberal hogwash in your diet to be able to choke this one down. Personally, I had trouble with some bad after-taste.
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Summary: there is hope
Review: I can't remember when I've last seen such a scrupulously researched book. The footnotes are a work of art in themselves. Easily the best book of reporting in the last thirty years.
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Summary: A very good but frightening book
Review: I read this a few years ago and re-read it last month. It gives a very compelling view of microbes and their evolution and how humans have responded to these threats.
The section on AIDS is especially good as it shows the challenges facing scienctists when politics, religion and bigotry get into the mix and complicate how to best address serious health issues.
This book is sobering as we often find ourselves buried amidst our technological hubris, we fail to recognize that the natural world is out there evolving and changing, not at our commands, but often times in reaction to our actions. We complex creatures are still made up of billions of cells and are vulnerable to single cell organisms and viruses.
I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: This is your wake up call
Review: If you live in the comfy West, Third World health issues can seem about as remote as McDonald's on Mars. Laurie Garrett's accessible, passionate book reminds us that despite the cultural, political and economical crevasses that separate nations, humankind is united by a number of factors, and vulnerability to the microbial world is one of them. Disease has no respect for boundaries and complacency is our enemy. The Coming Plague is indeed an elaborate, riveting detective story and Garrett's CDC cowboy heroes who became the cavalry in the most remote and dangerous of locations in their search for the source of contagious disease, became my own. I note that there has been criticism of Garrett for for alleged scientific and research inaccuracies. The message is still crystal clear: the health of humankind needs a global perspective and global policy. It's a weighty subject but Garrett turns it into a thrilling read that I couldn't put down. I came away convinced that no matter who we are, we should be cannily aware of the newly emerging diseases, the formidable power of the microbial world, and our responsibility as individuals in contributing to global health. Garrett explains how health and disease have a domino effect. What goes around, comes around. This is Buddhist philosophy in practice. Single actions have universal ramifications. For example, Garrett shows how misuse of antibiotics in treating tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union impacts on vulnerability to the disease worldwide. Reading of the losing battle against malaria deeply saddened me when winning the battle seemed to be within grasp. It appears that politics and medicine are joined at the hip. Some years ago Rachel Carson's Silent Spring influenced me. The Coming Plague is similarly inspiring. And perhaps McDonald's on Mars doesn't seem so far away after all.
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Summary: Survival of the fittest.....
Review: It's taken me a week to read Laurie Garrett's THE COMING PLAGUE. I work for one of the organizations Garrett cites frequently, and was aware of much of the content of the book before I began to read, but it helps to be reminded. In the mid-70s I studied epidemiology, demography and biostatistics at Georgetown as part of my graduate work. One of the statistics I learned to compute was a neonatal mortality rate based on specific causes of death--infectious and other. We were convinced the infectious disease rates had been dropping for hundreds of years owing to human intervention and would continue to do so. Shortly after I graduated, drug resistant strains of microbes caused the infectious rates to climb again. The world's population has grown dramatically in the past 100 years (1.5 billion to 6 billion) and in all liklihood will continue to expand a while longer (15 billion by 2050), but the AIDS plague with all it's attendent drug-resisitant diseases may do for humanity what the Black Plague did for humanity in the 14th Century--eliminate much of it. Garrett says the microbes don't have to win, but I'm afraid they will. "Know-nothing" politicians, "capable-survivor" bureacrats, tyrants like Idi Amin and Sadam Hussein, wars spurred by ethnic hatred and religious fanaticism, homophobia, misogyny, unbridled and unregulated international commerce and exploitation of labor, degradation of the world's forests and oceans, and refugee movements all ensure the microbes will win. From the tuberculosis epidemics of the industrial age of the 19th century, to the spread of drug resistant malaria by troops and civilians in WWII, to the current spread of AIDS and drug resistent forms of TB across the world, the germs are having a field day. Garrett's book's subtitle is "Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance" -- and yes, Al Gore is mentioned-- a man who actually understands the disease/ecological balancing issues. The world took a giant backstep in the 1980s when the U.S. leaders pretty much looked the other way and AIDS got the upper hand. With the return of the same politicians to power, why shouldn't we dispair, especially when the first act of the new administration is to pull funding from family planning agencies, who are fighting the very factors that can lead to the end of humanity--overpopulation and unprotected sex. I kept thinking of Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Mask of the Red Death" as I read this book--During a plague, a group of wealthy nobles and their families sequester themselves away in a castle where they think they are safe from the disease. One night they hold a masked ball and discover that death is in their midst. You can't run and you can't hide--death is in our midst. So, you better act. Garrett lists the things we need to do, and if your're reading this review, you probably already know many of them, but, read her book anyway, just to make sure.
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Summary: Broad and Profound Insights in one single book
Review: Laurie Garrett is an excellent writer, she could easily had made this book a novel, as a matter of fact she almost did. With her great detailed narrative she makes you fell inside the history of the modern microbe hunters, I've read several other book in this subject and none of them treats the subject in the professional and "journalistic" way Garrett does. You can easily detect she knows her business, the concepts and the way she makes them all make sense is laudable.
The only drawback I can see in this book is that sometimes it felt a bit long. I must say again she is a great writer, but gives a whole lot of information, sometimes returning to something she already had said before, only that this time adding new information and commentaries. The book is great and the information is top quality, besides she gives great insights that keep you in the right track. I totally recommend this book to anyone interested in emerging diseases or epidemics in the twentieth century (up to 1995, of course).
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Summary: Good information buried in a bunch liberal crap.
Review: Outstanding! This book is an excellent read! I read the Hot Zone 2 years ago and this is even better. Garrett gives fantastic insight and detail concerning many deadly viruses that have attacked humankind in the 20th century and continue to threaten us. Not only this, but she goes on to highlight the feats and bravery of the scientist that have gone to battle with these horrific microbes over the past century. A stunning account of how disease is a part of nature, yet we as humans often aid to its spread. A sobering, eye opening book. As unsettling as it is, some nights it was hard to put down. One of the best books I've ever read. Bravo for Ms. Garrett
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