Fiona’s Reviews > Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease > Status Update

a mild variant of the cholera organism can maintain itself along the coast of Louisiana and Texas, where protection of water and hygiene are substandard and where eating of raw shellfish appears to contribute to the maintenance of the organism. Yet Louisiana and Texas do not have a bad cholera problem. Fairly large numbers of people seem to become infected, but almost nobody gets cholera.

How then can minds become better prepared to recognise infectious causation? One step would be to recognise that the microbial world with which humans intimately interact is far more rich and diverse than we have thought and perhaps than we would like to think. A prepared mind recognises that we know very little about what these microbes are doing.

Imagine, for example, that the only damage a vaccine caused in humans was a very slight amount of brain damage—enough, say, to lower an IQ score by five points in one out of every hundred children. This amount of damage would probably be considered intolerable for a human vaccine. But would we be do concerned if one out of every hundred Felixes took an extra second to figure out how to sneak up on the kitchen table

The virulence antigen strategy requires that vaccine experts shift away from eradication as a goal. This shift is dictated for some diseases by the ability of vaccines to prohibit disease but not infections. When children are vaccinated against pertussis (whooping cough), for example, the disease is generally prevented but the organism is still present and transmissible.

Consider the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Although the Soviet Union had overwhelming superiority in fire power, the United States saw that it could tip the balance in favor of the Afghan rebels by providing Stinger missiles, which could knock out the main Soviet threat: attack helicopters. The United States provided this weapon after considering which of the two sides was more dangerous to U.S. interests.

Ever since the anti-malaria campaign fell apart in the 1960s, master planners have been dangling the prospects of an effective vaccine that could eradicate malaria. It is a desperate hope of last resort. Humans have never controlled a sexually reproducing protozoal parasite by vaccination. Vaccination against viral and bacterial diseases has a long record of success, but this success tells us little

If Menelaus could avoid being deterred by any of these forms, the sea god would eventually transform himself into a benign cooperative shape. By anticipating Proteus’ changeability and developing a strategy for coping with it, Menelaus could control his adversary and resolve his predicament. This allegory is illustrative of the way we must face the problem of infectious disease.

The sea nymph Idothea told the lost and desperate Menelaus what he needed to do to get back home to Sparta. Menelaus would have to force the instructions out of her father, the sea god Proteus. But Idothea warned Menelaus that the encounter would be challenging. Proteus would change his form to avoid being controlled. At one moment he might be a serpent, at another a leopard or a wild boar.

Three decades after the Stalingrad outbreak, a promising young medical student named Ken Alibek was asked by his Soviet professor to analyse the unusual cluster of tularaemia cases. After intensive study Alibek reported his conclusion to the professor: the epidemic must have been caused intentionally. The professor then told Alibek to “forget you ever said what you just did. I will forget it too......

Amherst sent a letter from his base in New York to the ranking officer for western Pennsylvania, Colonel Henry Bouquet, who was based in Philadelphia: “Could it not be Contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Strategem in our power to Reduce them.” Bouquet wrote back, “I will try to inoculate the——with Some Blankets