The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston was on my daughter's required reading list for her freshman year of high school. (I cannot believe my daughter is going to be in high school!) I thought this looked like a great book to read since I loved The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager. The latter dealt with the discovery, testing and use of sulfa drugs and how they changed the world...making strep an inconvenience instead of a deadly illness, allowing soldiers who survive their wounds to survive their treatment and providing the basis for the variety of antibiotics that we take for granted today.
The Demon in the Freezer deals with smallpox and its eradication from the world through the difficult and compelling work of scientists and medical professionals all over the world. Yes, in 1979, smallpox was completely eliminated as a health threat throughout the entire world. It only existed in controlled environments as a vaccine. However, and this is not a spoiler, smallpox is now a very real threat and a possible source of biological warfare. The book is touted as a "thriller" and while the early parts of the book dealing with the identification and eradication of smallpox was compelling, the latter part which dealt with the potential threat of smallpox in the future paled in comparison.
The book on the whole did not deliver what I was hoping for in comparison with The Demon Under the Microscope. So, I sit here patiently waiting for Thomas Hager's next work the topic of which he leaked to me, but which I will keep a secret! Suffice to say, it's about a scientific discovery that you probably don't know about but is "directly responsible for keeping alive 2 billion people today." Pretty cool, huh?
Di
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