By Richard Preston (2002)
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
If the decision to eliminate a dangerous, deadly virus was yours
to make, would you eradicate it?
“Small pox can bring the world to its knees.”
The Demon in the
Freezer is a daunting recollection of the devastation that small pox caused,
it’s “eradication,” and how the very secure samples hidden safely away in only
two facilities worldwide have quite possibly been leaked to countries that now
have the power to create global chaos if it’s ever set loose. After anthrax
scares following 9/11 show that bio warfare is not an unreal possibility,
researchers begin searching for a new small pox vaccine that would hold up if
a super-strand were created. “Given human nature and the record of history, it
seems possible that someone could be playing with the genes of small pox right
now” (p. 277).
This real life thriller will make you sit and ponder major
ethical decisions such as saving samples of a deadly virus, testing live small
pox strands on animals to see how they respond, and whether reawakening a virus
that has all but been eradicated would ever prove worth it.
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