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The Demon in the Freezer
by Richard Preston
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Fawcett (2003-08-26)
ISBN: 0345466632
EAN: 9780345466631
Dewey Decimal #: 616.91205
Binding/Media: Mass Market Paperback - 304 pages
Release Date: 2003-08-26
SKU: P0041-Preston-R
Condition: Collectible: Like New
Comments: First Ballantine Mass Market Edition: Sept. 2003. Full # line.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
“The bard of biological weapons captures
the drama of the front lines.”
-Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy
The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.
Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers-at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.
Usamriid went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington, D.C. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government’s response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven Hatfill.
Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Amazon.com Review
On December 9, 1979, smallpox, the most deadly human virus, ceased to exist in nature. After eradication, it was confined to freezers located in just two places on earth: the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Maximum Containment Laboratory in Siberia. But these final samples were not destroyed at that time, and now secret stockpiles of smallpox surely exist. For example, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent end of its biological weapons program, a sizeable amount of the former Soviet Union's smallpox stockpile remains unaccounted for, leading to fears that the virus has fallen into the hands of nations or terrorist groups willing to use it as a weapon. Scarier yet, some may even be trying to develop a strain that is resistant to vaccines. This disturbing reality is the focus of this fascinating, terrifying, and important book. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and author of the bestseller The Hot Zone, Preston is a skillful journalist whose work flows like a science fiction thriller. Based on extensive interviews with smallpox experts, health workers, and members of the U.S. intelligence community, The Demon in the Freezer details the history and behavior of the virus and how it was eventually isolated and eradicated by the heroic individuals of the World Health Organization. Preston also explains why a battle still rages between those who want to destroy all known stocks of the virus and those who want to keep some samples alive until a cure is found. This is a bitterly contentious point between scientists. Some worry that further testing will trigger a biological arms race, while others argue that more research is necessary since there are currently too few available doses of the vaccine to deal with a major outbreak. The anthrax scare of October, 2001, which Preston also writes about in this book, has served to reinforce the present dangers of biological warfare. As Preston eloquently states in this powerful book, this scourge, once contained, was let loose again due to human weakness: "The virus's last strategy for survival was to bewitch its host and become a source of power. We could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart." --Shawn Carkonen
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Customer Reviews
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WOW!!!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-05-22
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
You have to read this book, if you want to be in the know as to what is going on and where it is going on this book is a must read. All I can say is I could not put the book down. Reads fast, easy, and full of information that you can't find out until you know where to look to back it up.
Be ready this book will change they way you see things.
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Excellent
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-04-22
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I recieved this book within days of my order I will absolutely order again from this vendor again.
Thanks
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Review
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-03-08
In The Demon in the Freezer, author Richard Preston pulls the reader from the modern doom-and-gloom world of HIV and N1H1, and into the even-more-unimaginably-horrific universe of ebola, anthrax, and smallpox.
Contrary to what the title suggests (even though one new to smallpox may find it not-so-obvious), the book actually provides additional information on the anthrax attacks of 9/11, the impact of ebola had on the globe, and much more. Of course, the majority still revolves around smallpox, especially the push toward its eradication. Basically, when he began writing this book, it looked like Preston was prepared with a college textbook's load of research.
Despite the book's background on medicine and top-secret government bio-hazard research labs, which may be difficult to understand, the author spares the reader the necessity of coming equipped with the internet or dictionary using well-thought out analogies that characterize each concept. Preston's descriptions keep his book flowing smoothly, at least for the beginning.
Unfortunately, as with all other books, not everything in Preston's work is flawless. The book has very few but major problems, ranging from repetitive sentence structure to overused details that simply kill the story, if there was any actual plot to start with. There are so many instances where Preston flips between storylines/time frames. For example, whereas the reader is looking at the evolution of smallpox, in a flip of a page they are back in the 21st century, in a biohazard lab. Even what was supposed to be the climax of the book (the government research facility that clashes with smallpox) tips towards the "weak" end of the suspense scale.
I say that the ending was where Preston really "crashed and burned." The beginning of the book is a quiet thriller, beautifully written so that that the reader can indulge in the world of medical research and terrorist threats. However, as the book comes closer to the end, the reader is presented with lifeless, monotonous narration from the author. Preston probably had all of this "good stuff" in his arsenal of research that was readily available for his use for the end of the book, but in the very end he failed to use it in a way that would make his story consistently enticing. And even if he did have mediocre ones that he did not use in his list, he could have at least made an effort to elaborate and improve on those. And those details, which Preston still kept up from the very start of the book, didn't make anything better.
The book was good (good, not great) overall, but that sour aftertaste at the very end was just something I couldn't wash out.
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Is there really a demon in that freezer?
Rating (3)
Date: 2010-02-26
In the 21st century, our worries of global epidemics revolve around AIDS and maybe, H1N1. Yet Richard Preston's book Demon in the Freezer resurrects the frightening possibility of smallpox seizing the world yet again in this haunting one-of-a-kind thriller. The book is a roller coaster ride as Preston describes in swift yet intricate detail the anthrax attacks on September 11th, 2001, taking the reader into the midst of the calamity and the chain reactions that followed. His voice is astoundingly concise and his descriptions vivid. For a complex topic like smallpox, he manages to weave through the confusion to present in plain white a simple explanation.
Preston put a significant amount of effort into researching the different people and situations in the US intelligence community. He is able to make seemingly normal people superheroes by animating them with voice and humor. His observations take the reader into the brilliance of their minds, through every hour of their day, and deep into the very feelings of joy, depression, and shock that make them human. He articulates each scene as effortlessly as a camera panning a movie. I could almost hear the dramatic music playing in the background.
For such a small virus like smallpox, it surely is treated like Beyonce in Preston's book. The author spills descriptions upon descriptions, lavishing the virus with words and scenes of endless piles. He is an artist who pays utmost attention to the smallest, yet most important, detail. He raves about coffee with doughnuts, autopsies, Level 4 biohazard labs, all of which make his work pop off the page. He leaves us powerless in the faces of grape-loving monkeys, pulling on our heartstrings ruthlessly like a puppet master as we watch the monkeys die slowly. One. By one.
On an informational note, Preston also educates the reader in a fascinating fashion about Ebola, the history of poxes, and the difficulties in eradicating the pox all over the world. His work is one of the more appealing biology supplements out there.
Though his writing is more eloquent than mine will ever be, the structure of his words is quite a headache. Preston jumps around like a flea on a dog, dragging the reader with him in a dizzying way. The backtracking and fast-forwarding of the novel is comparably as hectic as the Eradication itself.
Preston is a writer capable of drilling into the very cores of our being, stirring questions about the essence of humanity. Yet even with these powerful messages, he is never able to hit home. Towards the end, it felt as if Preston was tired of running his race, and decided instead to take a quick happily ever after. The last few sections of the book were quite the disappointment; his lingering pieces of scientific knowledge carelessly scrawled together in a fat, mashed mess. Just like black ink on a pearl-white shirt, his parting words stained his work. They blurred his ideas into obscure images, and trampled on his messages so they no longer could be understood. The core of the book, the "moral of the story", in an ironic way, was lost in the depths of the sea, lurking in the shadows.
Just like smallpox.
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The Demon in the Freezer
Rating  (1)
Date: 2009-12-20
0 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book was falling apart when I got it. It was in very poor shape.
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