So Many Books; So little Time

The Demon in the Freezer

The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story

by Richard Preston

c. 2002

Richard Preston is the author of The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event. He is the only non-doctor to have been awarded the CDC’s Champion of Prevention Award. So, it is not a coincidence that he was invited after September 11 and the Anthrax mailings to write about Smallpox and what COULD happen if smallpox seeds fell into the wrong hands.

Officially, smallpox has been eliminated from the planet. It is the only disease that has been eliminated from the planet. Diseases are not considered benign things by biologists but living organisms and it was thought for decades that it would be impossible to completely eliminate one. Preston takes us on the journey to eliminate smallpox from the development of the vaccination technique to the last victim, Rahima, on the small island of Bhola.

He then shares with us the official word of where the smallpox seeds are, how they have been collected, how many there are, and, most importantly, how they are being stored. He also shares with us the unofficial knowledge that the former Soviet Union was doing work with smallpox and developing weapons grade smallpox by the ton and also developed a delivery system. Then, of course, the Soviet Union broke up and what happened to that smallpox is anybody’s guess. But, of course, officially it doesn’t exist.

Preston takes us on another journey or two in this short book of 233 pages. He takes us inside the CDC and USAMRID and lets us meet researchers who worked on the Anthrax mailed to Senator Tom Daschle and others and we learn what sort of anthrax it was, how it was made and possibly even who or what sort of person would and did mail it. 

More importantly we meet the researchers working at the CDC with smallpox trying to determine what would happen if or when smallpox recurs on the planet. The end of the book is concerned with an even more important question. Researchers in Australia developed a mousepox strain using IL-4 (a naturally occuring mouse gene) that completely wiped out 100% of the mice it came in contact with. So, Preston went into the lab with a researcher to re-create their results. In five months they had a strain that killed 100% of mice naturally resistant to mousepox.

IL-4 insertion is public knowledge and cannot be banned from being such.  That said, IF someone COULD or DOES get ahold of smallpox seeds (and there are some really deadly ones stored at the CDC and in the former Soviet Union), it would take about six or seven months for that person to kill off most or all of the human population of the WORLD should they be lacking a conscience and self-preservation.

If this book and its message doesn’t scare you to what a nut with a laboratory could do, your head has been in the sand too long.