The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story | RICHARD PRESTON | Those Who Forget History Are Doomed...

The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story | RICHARD PRESTON | Wow! What a book!

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The Demon in the F...

	The Demon in the Freezer : A True Story RICHARD PRESTON, 2002 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 124 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

?The bard of biological weapons captures
the drama of the front lines.?
-Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy

The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with ?hot? agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.

Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world?s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers-at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.

Usamriid went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington, D.C. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government?s response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven Hatfill.

Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat It

This quote inherits a new sense of forboding when considering the history of smallpox, its eradication and the threat it currently presents us today. Richard Preston has managed to write my favorite kind of book with Demon in the Freezer: an informative but fascinating non-fiction page turner that is accessible by anyone with an inherent sense of curiosity.

Definite five stars.

Wow! What a book!

Now this is the way to write a technical non-fiction book. It is a thriller, it is interesting, it is educational, and it is very, very frightening. Every human being that can read should buy this book and read it through. Great job, Mr Preston!

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Another MUST READ from this author!

This book is a bold statement about the state of our world. Smallpox and anthrax are the new weapons of choice for anyone who wants to infect large populations around the world.
It's a great book and everyone should read it just to know what's out there.

Engaging

The author of the international bestseller 'The Hot Zone' returns to familiar ground; this time he is out to scare us with smallpox. We get to know the history of the disease, man's desperate but eventually successful battle against the lethal disease, and also man's attempt to recreate the illness in a more potent form to be used as a weapon in bioterrorism.

Engaging in its authentic scares and highly informative, this book tells us a story which is joyously uplifting in its account of humanity's proudest moments as it succeeded after years of tireless labour in ridding the world of a menace that had plagued mankind from time immemorial. But the story is also depressingly alarming when we learn of the evil that lurks in the heart of men: the doctors eradicated the world of smallpox but could not uproot the virus from the hearts of people who recreated a much lethal version of the disease for biowarfare.

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it is only a matter of time

OK. I'm a nurse and I read all things medical. Whether nonfiction or fiction, I buy them, read them, think about them. Yeah, this was scary about the smallpox, but my gosh, the author hopped aroudn describing mundane details when he should have been focused on the big picture.
Who has smallpox now? I think someone knows or can conjecture. Very scary.
I do belive a bio weapon is going to be deployed in the not too distant future --it is probably sadly inevitable. But I did like the book despite the fact that it needed some tight editing.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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