Beating Back the Devil

The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease like Ebola. These doctors run toward it. Their job is to stop epidemics from happening.

They are the disease detective corps of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)?a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons?and, like intelligence operatives in the traditional sense, they perform their work largely in anonymity. They are not household names, but over the years they were first to confront the outbreaks that became known as hantavirus, Ebola, and AIDS. Every day they work to protect us by hunting down the deadly threats that we forget until they dominate our headlines, West Nile virus, anthrax, and SARS among others.

In this riveting narrative, Maryn McKenna?the only journalist ever given full access to the EIS in its fifty-three-year history?follows the first class of disease detectives to come to the CDC after September 11, the first to confront not just naturally occurring outbreaks but the man-made threat of bioterrorism. They are talented researchers?many with young families?who trade two years of low pay and extremely long hours for the chance to be part of the group that are on the frontlines, in the yellow suits and masks, that has helped eradicate smallpox, push back polio, and solve the first major outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, and E. coli O157 and works to battle every new disease before it becomes an epidemic.

Urgent, exhilarating, and compelling, Beating Back the Devil takes you inside the world of these medical detectives who are trying to stop the next epidemic?before the epidemics stop us.

Autorentext

Maryn McKenna

Inhalt

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE July 2002, Anniston, Alabama

ONE Training

July 2002, Atlanta

TWO Polio

1955, Atlanta

THREE West Nile Virus

August-October 2002, Atlanta

FOUR Smallpox

1972, Bangladesh

FIVE Listeriosis

August-November 2002, Philadelphia

SIX AIDS

1981, Los Angeles

SEVEN Uniformity

November-December 2002, Atlanta

EIGHT War

1994, Zaire

NINE Malaria

March 2003, Malawi

TEN Tuberculosis

1999-2000, Baltimore and New York

ELEVEN Drug-Resistant Staphylococcus

March-June 2003, Los Angeles

TWELVE Terrorism

2001, New York City and Washington, D.C.

THIRTEEN SARS

March-July 2003, Hanoi and Bangkok

EPILOGUE July-September 2003

NOTES ON SOURCES, SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX