33 pages • 1 hour read
Richard PrestonThe Demon in the Freezer
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: To Bhola Island
In the opening pages of "To Bhola Island," Preston provides a brief natural history of poxviruses. Smallpox originated when the virus "jumped" from another species and adapted to infect human hosts. Typically, poxviruses are species-specific: seals, pigeons, horses, and kangaroos have their own unique forms of pox, while various other poxes target insect species, torturing and destroying their hosts from the inside out. Smallpox or "variola," for its part, might have been derived from a pox that targeted rodents. Its inadvertent spread was facilitated by the creation of increasingly large civilizations, and crises in ancient Greece and ancient Rome may well be linked to the presence of variola. This virus also devastated societies in North and South America, including the Inca Empire and then the Native American communities that grappled with smallpox when it was used as a biological weapon in the French and Indian War.
The effort to eradicate smallpox worldwide was spearheaded by Donald Ainslie (D.A.) Henderson, a CDC researcher assigned to put together such a program for the World Health Organization. His work began in the 1960s, and was facilitated by an approach known as "ring vaccination." First used by William H. Foege, the ring vaccination strategy involves isolating smallpox outbreaks by vaccinating all the people in the area that circles a smallpox danger zone. Henderson proved to be an immensely talented administrator, but his efforts also relied on the support of dedicated fieldworkers and medical professionals. One such partner in the Eradication was Larry Brilliant, a doctor who traveled to Asia in the early 1970s. Brilliant came into the orbit of a famed guru Neem Karoli Baba, who steadfastly believed that India's national progress was bound up with the eradication of smallpox—and who prompted Brilliant to join Henderson's effort. Eventually, Brilliant proved his worth when he helped to isolate a smallpox outbreak at Tatanagar Station.
Smallpox had been eradicated in most of Asia by 1974; only Bangladesh remained clearly vulnerable to the disease. The virus broke out across the country early in 1975, and Henderson's team trained its energy and resources on the country in one final push to wipe smallpox out. Victory seemed certain when Stan Foster, the Bangladesh team leader, was alerted to one final case: smallpox had emerged on Bhola Island and infected a young girl named Rahima Banu. Foster traveled to Bhola Island, used ring vaccination to secure the area, and took samples of smallpox scabs from Rahima, who recovered and lived. Only a few further cases of smallpox would be observed anywhere in the world. A cook named Ali Maow Maalin was the last human being to be naturally exposed to smallpox (in 1977), and medical photographer Janet Parker was accidentally exposed to a researcher's variola samples (1978). As of the time of Preston's writing, there were only two official and approved stores of smallpox in the world: one at the CDC in Atlanta, and a second in Russia.
Chapter 4 Summary: The Other Side of the Moon
Preston begins this section by describing the meeting between Christopher J. Davis, a member of the British intelligence services, and Vladimir Pasechnik, a chemist originally from Russia. In 1989, Pasechnik fled to Britain, seeking asylum and bearing troubling news: the Soviet Union had developed an extensive bioweapons program known as Biopreparat. Among the projects pursued by the Russian scientists involved were missile-based delivery systems that could drop smallpox or plague payloads on civilian populations. Concerned, Davis and his colleagues contacted American intelligence forces with the news. A team comprising American and British representatives toured the Biopreparat facilities in 1991, but were met by Soviet officials who vigorously denied any wrongdoing and, in some cases, denied the very presence of biological weapons.
Even after the inspections, the Russians continued to experiment with the production of weapons-grade smallpox well into the 1990s; some of these efforts can be traced to Lev Sandakhchiev, a high-ranking researcher affiliated with the Russians' Vector initiative. Vector's funding stream would eventually disappear. However, other countries would continue to pose bioweapons-related threats, based on the testimony Preston has gathered. Part of "The Other Side of the Moon" consists of quotations and explanations by microbiologist Richard Spertzel, who investigated Iraq's bioweapons capabilities. In his view, Iraq's use of smallpox can be traced back to the 1970s; the country still pursues biowarfare buildup. (The Iraqis at one point tried to explain—unconvincingly, as Spertzel establishes—that they were creating camelpox instead of smallpox.) Nor is Iraq the only country in the Middle East seeking biowarfare capacities; in fact, Iran had approached Vector with the apparent intention of creating a bioweapons cache of its own.
Such developments in biowarfare had an important effect on the career of Peter Jahrling, a well-respected Ebola researcher who became preoccupied with smallpox as he was alerted to the disease's continuing potential for destruction. Inspired by efforts to combat HIV, Jahrling supported a research strategy that would develop new vaccines and medicines to address a potential smallpox outbreak. This approach of renewed inquiry clashed with the approach supported by D.A. Henderson. The older scientist wanted existing stores of smallpox destroyed outright, as a sign of international cooperation and as an acknowledgment of the disease's illicitly destructive power. Jahrling's approach was also complicated by a 1994 WHO vote to destroy existing smallpox samples by 1999. Though the deadline was later extended to 2002, he realized that the stakes, in terms of timing and valid results, were high for his research.
Chapter 3-4 Analysis
As described in "To Bhola Island," the effort to eradicate smallpox was a vast and impressive initiative—and an unpredictable one. Though he eventually proved to be a masterful manager, D.A. Henderson at first "didn't believe that smallpox or any other infectious disease could be eradicated from the planet" (71). He in fact believed that the effort to eliminate smallpox would rapidly fail; instead, it transformed into a meaningful endeavor that kept him outside of the United States for over a decade. The sources of success in eradication were just as unpredictable, in their own ways, as the structure of the entire project. Valuable though he proved to the eradication effort in India, Larry Brilliant didn't set out for Asia with anything like eradication in mind. Rather, the chain of events that led him to eradication began with a role in a shoddy movie called Medicine Ball Caravan, took him on a humanitarian mission to Bhola Island, and brought him first to Neem Karoli Baba and then, after persistent job-seeking visits, to Henderson's team.
Henderson himself acknowledges the collaborative and even motley nature of the project, noting at one point to Preston, "I'm one of many in the Eradication" (75). If anything, perhaps the eradication is best taken as a testimony to the power of cooperation in the face of daunting odds and humanitarian crisis. Henderson was of course an important driving force, and would later emerge as a powerful spokesperson for the idea that the world's remaining smallpox stocks should be systematically eliminated. But a collaboration-based model of scientific endeavor can also be a form of disruption, as the vast, frightening Biopreparat program clearly demonstrates.
In an ideal world, a program like Biopreparat would remain firmly in the hands of Russian scientists and would only be used (much like nuclear weapons) for the purpose of deterrence. Yet, Preston and the various defecting Russians are well aware how little such conditions resemble reality. The multi-faceted nature of the Russian bioweapons program eventually became one of the program's greatest liabilities: "Because it was compartmentalized and secret, it had the potential to fall apart into smaller pieces, and the world might never know where all the pieces had gone" (112). Many of the individual Russian scientists might have been genuinely responsible individuals; however, a single rogue researcher or a single lapse that put some of those "pieces" into the hands of a less responsible, less humane group would have done lasting damage. Not even a presiding authority such as Henderson could have kept such a program, with all its dangers, under perfect control.
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