Volume 51, Number 6 · April 8, 2004
Weapon of Mass Destruction
By William H. McNeill
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
by John M. Barry
Viking, 546 pp., $29.95
John Barry's lively, artful, and very well informed account of the flu epidemic in 1918–1919, which killed more people than the guns and bayonets of World War I, ought to attract unusual interest in a year when a lethal form of 'avian flu' has begun to spread from birds to people in East Asia, and may (or may not) be about to spread as widely around the world as its predecessor did. If that happens, the medical profession and public health authorities will be far better prepared than anyone was in 1918, since they now know how to immunize human populations against a flu virus, whereas in 1918 no one knew what caused the flu and efforts to find a cure proved ineffective. Yet despite all the expert knowledge and skills accumulated since 1918, it is far from sure that our contemporary medical establishment could deliver enough of the necessary vaccine in time to forestall another march of illness and death comparable to what occurred eighty-six years ago.
Review, 4411 words
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