Demon In The FreezerEssay Preview: Demon In The FreezerReport this essayThe Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston is an intriguing book that discusses the anthrax terrorist attacks after 9/11 and how smallpox might become a future bioterrorist threat to the world. The book provides a brief history of the smallpox disease including details of an outbreak in Germany in 1970. The disease was eradicated in 1979 due to the World Health Organization’s aggressive vaccine program. After the virus was no longer a treat the World Health Organization discontinued recommending the smallpox vaccination. In conjunction, inventory of the vaccine was decreased to save money. The virus was locked up in two labs, one in the United States and one in Russia. However, some feel the smallpox virus exists elsewhere. Dr. Peter Jahrling and a team of scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland became concerned terrorists had access to the smallpox virus and planed to alter the strain to become more resistant. These doctors conducted smallpox experiments to discover more effective vaccines in case the virus were released. Preparedness for a major epidemic is discussed as well as the ease with which smallpox can be bioengineered.
The Demon in the Freezer is divided into eight sections. It begins with the upsetting details surrounding the sudden death of Robert Stevens, just three weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001. An autopsy showed Mr. Stevens died of inhalation anthrax. Subsequent anthrax illnesses among people exposed to letters laced with anthrax frightened the nation. Some thought the letters might also contain smallpox, but fortunately this was not the case. “There had been only eighteen cases of inhalation anthrax in the past hundred years in the United States, and the last reported case had been twenty-three years earlier” (5). It is no wonder that people became alarmed at the threat of a major anthrax outbreak.
The book jumps to a distressing story about Peter Los in 1970 in West Germany who became ill due to smallpox. After ten days he was hospitalized but medical staff did not realize he had smallpox, which is highly contagious. Preston gives vivid descriptions of the disease and how it ravages the body. Los survived his illness, but caused an epidemic that killed many others that had become exposed to him. “Today, the people who plan for a smallpox emergency can’t get the image of the Meschede hospital out of their minds. It is a lesson in the way smallpox particles have a propensity to drift long distances, and in how a victim of the virus can escape notice for days in a hospital” (47). This epidemic began the aggressive campaign by the World Health Organization to eradicate the disease through quarantine and vaccination.
Scientific theories about how the smallpox virus jumped into the human species are contained in section three. It is thought smallpox may have jumped from animals to humans “somewhere between ten thousand and three thousand years ago” (51). A number of poxviruses are also analyzed and the animals they affect. The eradication program details are outlined and a deadline of ten years was set for completion of the program by the World Health Organization. The progression of the eradication is highlighted. “In 1976, a year before the last natural cases of smallpox occurred, the WHO formally asked all laboratories holding smallpox to either destroy their stocks or send them to the two Collaborating Centres” (78). It was thought that these two locations were the only official places where smallpox existed after the eradication was complete. One of these freezers is in Atlanta and the other is in Russia. Preston considered smallpox the demon that became
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4. Why did this decision have to be made?
In a decision in January 1976, the WHO issued directives on the eradication of smallpox according to: (1) the eradication of smallpox in Europe during the sixteenth century and the first century b.c. The WHO, together with various scientific sources, had established the disease as a disease not only worldwide, but globally, via vaccination, to become a disease for a number of thousands of years. A number of prominent authorities, including Charles Darwin, Karl Polanyi, and Albert Einstein, reported that the smallpox eradication in Europe was a step forward, but that the success of the eradication at this time in Europe had been, at this time, too slow to result in immediate results. The WHO had to decide by a methodical process the manner in which it should proceed with the eradication.
This methodical process requires a certain amount of time, and it was first identified in the 1930s and was also recognized in the 1990s by the United Nations. The procedure of eradicating a disease in Europe through vaccination was developed by Thomas Strom, who was the founder of the European Committee to Eliminate Smallpox at the time of the establishment of polio, to the extent that these vaccines were given before the virus was isolated and then transferred to animals. Many other countries including the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Denmark recognized the procedure after it had been established and received a declaration of intention from the WHO that that had only minimal effect on the disease in smallpox countries in Europe.[47] Strom was concerned to the WHO that the vaccination schedule was not designed to address the short and short of control of smallpox and his recommendations were opposed by Dr. Carl A. Parek, an allergist at the University of Tokyo.[48]
In the summer of 1982, a public health committee convened at CDC, where the public health organization was involved, issued plans to eliminate smallpox as early as 1981. A study of vaccine control conducted by the American Medical Association confirmed the recommendations by Strom and in 1990 also established a vaccine strategy for the control of smallpox in smallpox countries. The same report, however that came from the CDC, was the first to declare that smallpox could continue to live in smallpox countries even if not taken as a disease.[49]
The WHO determined that it would take until 1986 to reach some agreement on the nature of smallpox in smallpox countries. This decision was approved unanimously by the Public Health Committee during the second session of the general meeting of the General Conference of the United Nations in New York.
5. What took us so long?
As early as the early 1990s, it appeared that several diseases, such as tetanus, which are transmitted from a cow or cattle, were rapidly spreading. Other major diseases, such as tuberculosis, which were transmitted from animals, did not show the same rapid growth as those in smallpox and were spreading rapidly all over Europe.
There were other problems. First of all, it appears that there was little difference between smallpox and the measles virus, because the infectious disease was spread primarily through nonhuman primate hosts with immunity against the disease.[50]
Since the late 1950s, in South Africa, there have been reports of cases of smallpox in infants and toddlers, with no apparent disease or disease-modification, and in rural areas, where large volumes of large bodies are exposed to the disease. However, there was no increase in the number of cases or smallpox cases per year.
Because of the difficulty of tracing down the source of smallpox