Volume 42, Number 6 · April 6, 1995
Infection: The Global Threat
By Richard Horton
The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
by Laurie Garrett
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 750 pp., $25.00
The Hot Zone
by Richard Preston
Random House, 300 pp., $23.00
Begin with a thought experiment: What might it take to produce a virus with the potential to eliminate Homo sapiens? For a start, it should be one that we are unfamiliar with; our physical naiveté insures only perfunctory resistance to virulent infection. To preserve the element of surprise, the virus must cross to humans from another species. Airborne transmission would encourage such a leap: a cough or simply sharing a breath, especially if only a tiny amount of virus were needed to establish a human foothold. Once inside us, the virus must multiply with extraordinary rapidity, producing catastrophic and irreversible damage to all major organs: liver, heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, and gut. During this phase of fertile proliferation, subtle but significant changes to its structure (mutation) would enable the virus to evade any rear-guard attempt by our immune system to reestablish control. To give the virus the ultimate upper hand, we should possess neither drug nor vaccine to challenge the infection. Finally, we should be denied the means to restrain viral spread, an easy condition to fulfill if one is ignorant of where it normally (and peacefully) resides.[1]
Review, 5515 words
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