Anthrax
- Book Review,
by Jeanne Guillemin
Amazon.com
The great equalizer between humans and sheep, anthrax has filled us with morbid curiosity as far back as records exist. Once believed to be a manifestation of unholy fire, today it is seen as a weapon of deranged terrorists or sinister governments. Medical anthropologist Jeanne Guillemin's Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak examines the 1979 deaths of 64 Soviet citizens in the Ural mountains. Blamed at the time on tainted meat, Guillemin's team proved that a plume of spores from a nearby military site caused the event (Boris Yeltsin admitted this much at about the same time). Not just a medical detective story, Guillemin's book is also an insightful look into the effects such an outbreak has on survivors and a penetrating analysis of the prospects of biological warfare in the not-too-distant future. Starting in the local cemetery to find the victims' identities--the KGB had long ago seized their records--the team interviews survivors and kin, unleashing long-repressed feelings and yielding valuable information about those struck down. Ultimately, despite interference from the Russian military and civil service, the tainted meat hypothesis is refuted and clear evidence of illegal and dangerous research released. The reader is left to wonder about one Russian's suggestion that if the wind had changed course one day in 1979, hundreds of thousands might have died. Where does that leave us today? --Rob Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
In a dense and unsettling work, Boston College sociologist Guillemin depicts her 1992 journey to Russia to research a mysterious 1979 anthrax epidemic: little was known about the outbreak, in which 64 died in the remote province of Yekaterinburg, between Kazakhstan and Siberia. In pat and conflicting comments, Russian authorities said the outbreak had followed anthrax's usual pattern, deriving from either soil, ceramics dust or contaminated meat. But a general suspicion developed in the scientific and intelligence communities that the anthrax had resulted from a more unusual aerosol emission from the nearby Compound 19, a weapons facility. Was the outbreak a result of biological weapons technology? Guillemin's team members gather the evidence, though they are unable to establish a definitive answer. Her sociological background leads her to focus on the human variables in this scientific mystery; by tracking down survivors of the outbreak, she hoped to shed light on the enigmas of the disease's dispersal rate and pattern. Unfortunately, her recounting of many minute sparring sessions with the team's wily Russian counterparts, as well as a morass of sociological commentary on a fragmenting postcommunist Russian society, are prolix. Though it raises disturbing questions about research in biological warfare, this medical mystery is more appropriate for epidemiology and other medical professionals rather than fans of The Hot Zone. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Paul Goldberg
...a book that purports to expose deception ends up raising as many questions as it answers.
From Scientific American
In April 1979 the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk was suddenly struck by an epidemic of anthrax. At least 64 people died; the number may have been much higher. The official explanation was that contaminated meat had been sold in the city. Guillemin, professor of sociology at Boston College, was a member of a Russian-American team that Russia allowed years later (in 1992) to "piece together what information time and political censorship had not destroyed." What the team discovered was that a plume of aerosolized anthrax spores had escaped from Compound 19, a military base that had "a biological facility," a few days before anthrax spread among animals and people downwind. What Compound 19 was doing with anthrax remains unclear. The work may have been part of a biological warfare program. Because bioterrorism with anthrax is a concern today, Guillemin considers what might be done about it. She thinks the approach of the U.S. government--focusing on vaccination, civil-defense drills and a buildup of public health facilities--is wrong-headed. "Is the growth of a new 'threat industry' the best we can do? Are landscapes of fear the American environments of the future? Or is there a middle ground, where reasonable tactics for legal restraints can be combined with reasonable tactics to identify real threats to national security?"
From The New England Journal of Medicine, May 4, 2000
Anthrax, an ancient disease, was well known to the Greeks and Romans and was widespread in Europe for thousands of years. In the first chapter of this book, Guillemin cites Virgil, who describes in the Georgics how the disease spreads from animals to humans. This was the only mode of transmission until the dramatic airborne epidemic and epizootic of anthrax in 1979 in Sverdlovsk, a Russian city in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The amazing explanation Russian public health leaders gave for this episode will appall the reader, as it did those of us who heard their story when they visited the United States in 1988. These Russian officials fabricated a story of a foodborne epidemic brought on by faulty inspections by public health veterinarians. Veterinary inspectors are well versed in the clinical signs of anthrax and usually reject for slaughter animals with these signs; if an infected animal should reach the killing floor, the signs of disease are overt. The Russians have reported episodes of foodborne anthrax that followed ingestion of anthrax-infected meat. The largest foodborne epidemic ever reported occurred in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the civil war there in the 1970s. More than 8000 human cases of cutaneous anthrax were recorded and treated successfully. There was no intestinal disease. All the human cases resulted from eating animals that had died of anthrax. The salvage of dead animals is a common practice in southern Africa. The American pathologist David Walker proved the Russian explanation for the anthrax epidemic in Sverdlovsk to be false as soon as he examined the thoracic and mediastinal lymph nodes of the victims; the findings were consistent with airborne spread of the disease. Walker had no doubt that the 64 persons whose tissues he examined were victims of a release of anthrax aerosol that occurred for a few hours on April 2, 1979, near a military production facility in Sverdlovsk. The investigation of the epidemic by Matthew Meselson and Jeanne Guillemin, with assistance from Alexis Shelokov and Martin Hugh-Jones, is the focus of this interesting book. Meselson had suspected that the epidemic was unusual and of great relevance to the prevention of biologic warfare. Through his determined efforts he was first able to visit Sverdlovsk in 1988, almost 10 years after the accident, and then again after the opening of Russia to the West in the 1990s. Guillemin, a sociologist, weaves a story that holds the reader's attention. One feels the tragedy of the loss of a mother, a father, a wife, a husband, a son or daughter. Old-fashioned "shoe-leather" epidemiology reveals the impact of the disaster. How did the accident happen? Did it occur in the military facility? Was a broken pipe, an exhaust fan, or a mis-set control lever responsible? The answers are not known. But the fact remains that an accidental emission of airborne anthrax spores did occur. Meselson's persistence in seeking information about the occurrence of any cases of anthrax in animals paid off when he found that sheep had died of the disease, 30 km downwind from the epicenter two days before any human cases occurred. Highly susceptible herbivorous animals, such as sheep and cattle, can serve as sentinels. It was unusual that so many dogs supposedly died of anthrax during this epidemic -- or were they shot by the sanitation police? The failure to recover any viable anthrax organisms in and around the area in which human or animal disease occurred is also difficult to understand. But others have tried to recover Bacillus anthracis from sites where disease has occurred and have not always met with success. Toward the end of the book, Guillemin raises the moral issue of biologic warfare. She has demonstrated how terrible a small epidemic (one involving fewer than 100 cases) can be to society and how it can overwhelm medical resources. Readers can easily imagine the ramifications of a larger episode. Biologic warfare has no place in modern civilization. The only legitimate way to consider it was expressed by Albert Sabin in a toast to Russian and American scientists during a visit by Americans in the 1950s: "A toast to biological warfare -- against all disease." Anthrax is a well-written report of an epidemiologic investigation that will hold the attention of the medical community, especially public health scientists and veterinarians. James H. Steele, D.V.M., M.P.H.
Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
Economist
"...man's ever-improving knowledge of such invisible nasties as viruses has debunked ignorant superstitions and eased the suffering of countless unfortunates."
From Kirkus Reviews
An absorbing first-person account of an investigation into a mysterious 1979 anthrax epidemic in the Soviet Union, the worst ever recorded in a modern industrial nation. Soviet officials at first denied there was an epidemic and then claimed that it was caused by infected black-market meat, but in the United States some intelligence analysts believed the cause was an explosion in a biological weapons factory. With the Cold War over, foreign scientists were permitted to enter Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk at the time of the outbreak) in 1992, and Guillemin's husband, a Harvard biologist, led a small group of experts into Russia to discover the cause of the outbreak. Guillemin (Sociology/Boston Univ.), was the team's anthropologist. While the medical and biological team members sought to discover through autopsy materials whether the anthrax had entered victims' bodies through the lungs or the digestive system, Guillemin located and interviewed families of the victims to find out where they were at the time, what they were doing, and what they had eaten. Later, she mapped the victims' locations and correlated them with weather data showing wind speed and direction at the time. She supplements her grim, detailed description of these labors with an account of two return visits that to Yekaterinburg that revealed serious deficiencies in Russias health system and left her with serious doubts about the countrys stability. The data eventually assembled by the team contradicted Russian claims, but did not support US intelligence fears either. Yet, as Guillemin notes, the outbreak was as much about morality and political accountability as science: The state had failed to protect its citizens, and the medical professionals, like the military, had kept their silence. Makes palpable the virulence of anthrax as a biological weapon, raises important accountability issues, and questions our own country's leadership in arms control. (48 b&w photos, 4 maps, 2 tables) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Gerald Weissmann, M.D., New York University School of Medicine, and author of Darwin's Audubon and Democracy and DNA
"Whether of not Meselson's group nailed down the cause of the anthraxdeaths is not as important as the fact that they, and in particular Guillemin, have sounded a call to the world about the dangers of CB weapons. For this everyone owes them gratitude." (New York Times Book Review letter to the editor, 1/16) "Now a definitive account of the affair has appeared - "Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak" by Jeanne Guillemin, a Boston College sociologist who just happens to be married to Matthew Meselson. It is a masterpiece of investigative journalism ("shoe leather epidemiology," she would say): part detective story, part courtroom drama, part history of the Soviet Union, part meditation on the wickedness of governments.It is a beautiful book as well. It contains photographs of the victims, taken from their headstones in the cemetery where they are buried, photographs of the heroic pathologists who preserved their evidence in paraffin for nearly 15 years, photographs of the genial physicians who served as mouthpieces for the government coverup. Written in the heroic present, "Anthrax" permits us to look overthe shoulders of a team of five investigators, led by Meselson, who visited Russia in the summer of 1992 in search of answers. It offers vivid insights into how scientists actually work - the ceaseless questioning from every conceivable angle whose goal is to eliminate doubt."( David Warsh, The Boston Globe in his Economic Principals article entitled "Closure" of January 23, 2000) BACK COVER: "Jeanne Guillemin offers a riveting account of tracking down the causes of a public health calamity and penetrating layer upon layer of secrecy and obfuscation. She persuasively combines meticulous attention to scientific detail with alertness to the voice of those whose lives were changed by the crisis." (Sissela Bok, author of Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation and Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life) "Guillemin's book is a triple treat: it is a gripping detective story, a vivid portrayal of non-Moscow Russian life, and a standard-setting display of the scientific method at work. And there is a bonus: the reader will learn all about anthrax, the most likely weapon if biological warfare is ever waged." (Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University) "This book is an absorbing tale of an investigation into the anthrax epidemic that struck the Russian city of Sverdlovsk twenty years ago. But it can also be read as an important parable for our time because it deals with chemical and biological agents that the world is drawn to and yet does not really know how to handle." (Kai Erikson, Professor of Sociology and American Studies, Yale University and author of A New Species of Trouble) "Anthrax is the best book of medical detection since Berton Rouech's Eleven Blue Men. Tracing her story from Cambridge to Yekaterinburg and back again, Guillemin weaves savvy epidemiology, Russian history, and American science into a compelling first- person narrative. An instant classic, Anthrax is not only a distinguished account of fieldwork in social science, but also a work of literature that addresses the larger issue of human survival in the face of global risk.
New York Review of Books, in review of Ken Alibek's "Biohazard
"In her excellent recently published book, ANTHRAX, [Guillemin] describes in fascinating detail her investigation in Sverdlovsk..."
Book Description
In April of 1979 the city of Sverdlovsk in Russia's Ural Mountains was struck by a frightening anthrax epidemic. Official Soviet documents reported sixty-four human deaths resulting from the ingestion of tainted meat sold on the black market, but U.S. intelligence sources implied a different story, and the lack of documentation left unresolved questions. In her riveting investigation of the incident, Jeanne Guillemin unravels the mystery of what really happened during that tragic event in Sverdlovsk. Anthrax is a virulent and deadly bacteria whose spores can remain in soil for as long as seventy years, killing grazing animals and putting humans in jeopardy of eating infected meat. Contem-porary concern is more centered on anthrax as an airborne biological weapon whose inhaled spores can result in ninety percent mortality for those infected. As part of a team of doctors and researchers, Jeanne Guillemin traveled to Russia in 1992 to determine the cause and extent of the epidemic. Her affecting narrative transforms a case of epidemiological investigation into a politically charged mystery. She creates a vivid sense of immediacy and drama with her insider's account of the team's investigative work-the analysis of pathology photos and slides, meetings with political and public health officials, the retrieval of essential medical data-and candidly reveals the subjective side of science as she conducts interviews with afflicted families, visits sites, and interacts with those suspected of clouding the truth. Complete with medical case information and three epidemiological maps, this classic account relates directly to growing concern over bioterrorism and how the United States and other nations should respond. In the final chapters Guillemin surveys past and present covert biological weapons arsenals scattered around the world and the international legal efforts to eliminate them.
Download Description
In April of 1979 the city of Sverdlovsk in Russia's Ural Mountains was struck by a frightening anthrax epidemic. Official Soviet documents reported sixty-four human deaths resulting from the ingestion of tainted meat sold on the black market, but U.S. intelligence sources implied a different story, and the lack of documentation left unresolved questions. In her riveting investigation of the incident, Jeanne Guillemin unravels the mystery of what really happened during that tragic event in Sverdlovsk. Anthrax is a virulent and deadly bacteria whose spores can remain in soil for as long as seventy years, killing grazing animals and putting humans in jeopardy of eating infected meat. Contemporary concern is more centered on anthrax as an airborne biological weapon whose inhaled spores can result in ninety percent mortality for those infected. As part of a team of doctors and researchers, Jeanne Guillemin traveled to Russia in 1992 to determine the cause and extent of the epidemic. Her affecting narrative transforms a case of epidemiological investigation into a politically charged mystery. She creates a vivid sense of immediacy and drama with her insider's account of the team's investigative work--the analysis of pathology photos and slides, meetings with political and public health officials, the retrieval of essential medical data--and candidly reveals the subjective side of science as she conducts interviews with afflicted families, visits sites, and interacts with those suspected of clouding the truth. Complete with medical case information and three epidemiological maps, this classic account relates directly to growing concern over bioterrorism and how the United States and other nations should respond. In the final chapters Guillemin surveys past and present covert biological weapons arsenals scattered around the world and the international legal efforts to eliminate them.
From the Back Cover
"Jeanne Guillemin offers a riveting account of tracking down the causes of a public health calamity and penetrating layer upon layer of secrecy and obfuscation. She persuasively combines meticulous attention to scientific detail with alertness to the voice of those whose lives were changed by the crisis." -Sissela Bok, author of Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation and Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. "Guillemin's book is a triple treat: it is a gripping detective story, a vivid portrayal of non-Moscow Russian life, and a standard-setting display of the scientific method at work. and there is a bonus: the reader will learn all about anthrax, the most likely weapon if biological warfare is ever waged." -Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University "This book is an absorbing tale of an investigation into the anthrax epidemic that struck the Russian city of Sverdlovsk twenty years ago. But it can also be read as an important parable for our time because it deals with chemical and biological agents that the world is drawn to and yet does not really know how to handle." -Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble. "Anthrax is the best book of medical detection since Berton Roueché's Eleven Blue Men. Tracing her story from Cambridge to Yekaterinburg and back again, Guillemin weaves savvy epidemiology, Russian history, and American science into a compelling first-person narrative. An instant classic, Anthrax is not only a distinguished account of fieldwork in social science, but also a work of literature that addresses the larger issue of human survival in the face of global risk." -Gerald Weissmann, M.D., author of Darwin's Audubon and Democracy and DNA.
About the Author
Jeanne Guillemin is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and a senior fellow at the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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