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Title: Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak by Jeanne Guillemin ISBN: 0-520-22917-7 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 05 February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (10 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Passé
Comment: I looked to this book for more details about the Sverdlovsk outbreak after reading "Biohazard," the excellent exposé by Ken Alibek published a year after this book. Comparisons between the two books are inherently unfair and at the same time unavoidable because Alibek, who spent two decades directing major parts of the Soviet Union's covert biological warfare programs, knows so much more than everyone involved with this investigation could have ever hoped to uncover. Bottom line: I strongly recommend "Biohazard" over this book. Alibek's chapter on Sverdlovsk has riveting, first-hand anecdotal accounts, involving various inside players, of the accident at the anthrax production facility.
This book presents circumstantial evidence from people who were outside the biological warfare program: attending doctors, victims families, etc. Like "Biohazard," it also refutes the official "contaminated meat" story.
I did get a bit of the additional detail I was looking for, and for that I give it two stars, but it meanders quite a bit with childish, off-topic editorial musings that belong in a travelogue rather than in a presentation of findings, and I found it dull. I have harsher criticisms of this book but see no use in presenting them: there are nearly 400 used copies for sale here as I type this. It's dead.
Rating: 3
Summary: Epidemiologically valuable, but incomplete
Comment: Professor Guillemin's work on the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak in the former Soviet Union is written in a very conversational tone, which makes the book a quick read.
This conversational quality however quickly leads to off-topic meanderings; for example, parallels are drawn from classical Russian literature to situations she experiences (at least a fourth of her footnotes are to quoted Russian literature), and she often cannot resist waxing personal philosophic on the conditions of life in the world today (not necessarily in Russia). While she disowns the expected clinical descriptions and warns she chose a first-person, emotional narrative in the introduction, some (particularly specialists) might find this type of writing annoying.
This first-person approach has the deliberate quality of putting a human face on this situation of clinical interest -- and it is this attitude that dominates the work. She recounts the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak in terms of human loss and the suffering the families endured as a result. Her primary purpose is therefore to give the victims a voice. Not a bad thing, but not what I expected based on the title.
The down side to this emotional narrative is that the author often becomes whiny, even to the point of naivety (particularly about the realities of Cold War politics, the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty [which both the US and the USSR, not just the USSR, violated at will] and the extent and nature of the American bio-chemical weapons production programs. Unconscious assigning of white and black hats is an unfortunate bias to the work).
This work therefore should have been subtitled "A Sociological Exploration of the Aftermath of the Sverdlovsk Outbreak" or somesuch.
Methodologically, the approach is also problematic. While the testimony of the people of Sverdlovsk is vital, some of the critically important survivors could not be located, while others could not recall (or chose to forget) the details of the incident, which makes their accounts sometimes contradictory and the study itself largely incomplete. Moreover most of the citizen's testimony is hearsay, rumourmongering, or just plain speculation, usually governed by Soviet Cold War propaganda and disinformation. Many of the governmental officials simply refused to comment.
Professor Guillemin is a Sociologist and not a Bacteriologist/Epidemiologist, and this really affects the format of the work. She often quotes other Sociologists/Political Scientists on theoretics of social situations in transitional Russia (ostensibly as backgrounders), but these rarely have any relevance to the Sverdlovsk incident; often one is left with the impression she'd rather talk about the contemporary Russian people (or her husband!) and not the outbreak at all.
Of note is Professor Guillemin's aloofness to the 'scholarship' and eyewitnesses to Soviet bioweapons production during the Cold War. Although she names a few key individuals, she seems to give their first hand testimony almost no attention. I recommend Ken Alibek's _Biohazard_ (which includes a chapter on the Sverdlovsk incident), which Guillemin seems to have ignored. The reader is left wondering why Guillemin's many interviews didn't include Alibek/Alibekov or even Pasechnik (like Alibek, director of a biological weapons production facility in Russia before his defection), both of whom now reside in the US. Neither is any attention paid to the publications of KGB activities now emerging from the former Soviet Union. IOW, Guillemin doesn't seem to have done her homework.
Guillemin's work is however valuable, but ultimately for epidemiological reasons and for her reporting of the findings of the research team to which she was attached. The research team's conclusions are epidemiologically incomplete as well (the KGB seized all records and squelched the officials that could have assisted in an epizootic examination), but nonetheless the work advances the understanding of the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak.
As she was told by several Russians, this mystery will never be solved.
Avoid the book if you expect to find more than a paragraph of clinical detail or bacteriological discussion, to which Guillemin seems squeamish. She is however to be commended for presenting all her findings, incomplete or no. Such is good science.
Rating: 3
Summary: Academic approach to an anthrax outbreak
Comment: Jeanne Guillemin attempts to unravel the complex mystery of the 1979 Siberian outbreak of anthrax. Was it really from tainted meat, as the Soviet officials would have the world believe? Was the cause due to burning of dead anthrax-infected animals or due an accidental or purposeful release of weaponized anthrax spores from the Soviet facility, Compound 19?
Guillemin approaches her study of the events and its root cause following all of the principles of sound science.
As a human being, however, her outrage over this incident continues to surface. As she recounts her investigation she interjects this outrage, often digressing from the story line to vent her indignation.
Unlike a possibly dry standard scientific thesis this story could have turned into, she includes many human elements in her writing. She describes the families of the victims, their losses, and sorrow. She also goes into great detail about what her team ate and drank, the meals they missed, and every possible incident interesting or otherwise about the trip to Siberia. She even includes a description of her inappropriate wearing of sandals for a Siberian spring. The author is writing for a general audience rather than for the scientific community and she or her publisher understands the need for the appealing human element. Sadly this takes the reader away from focusing on the many fascinating scientific and public health aspects of the study that almost become an aside to her story of the quest for information on the victims.
It is a worthwhile, though in parts wordy read. Read in conjunction with "Biohazard", the dark side of science is well represented.
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Title: The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed by Marilyn W. Thompson ISBN: 006052278X Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story by Leonard A. Cole ISBN: 030908881X Publisher: Joseph Henry Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by William Broad, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg ISBN: 0684871599 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Biology of Doom : America's Secret Germ Warfare Project by Ed Regis ISBN: 080505765X Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It by Stephen Handelman, Ken Alibek ISBN: 0385334966 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 11 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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