The Demon in the Freezer

The Terrifying Truth About the Threat from Bioterrorism , #3

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published Jan. 20, 2003 by Headline Book Publishing Ltd.

ISBN:
978-0-7553-1217-7
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

(2 reviews)

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 …

2 editions

A horror story

I suspect when Richard Preston started writing The Demon in the Freezer, he intended the book to be entirely about smallpox — it’s eradication and potential resurrection, either by accident, warfare or terrorism. But after the anthrax-laced postal mailings that occurred shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the author felt compelled to merge the anthrax investigation into his work-in-progress.

It’s just a theory, but that would explain the book’s split personality. Although the back cover of this paperback edition only mentions the fight against smallpox, the account begins with the initial anthrax attacks, then flashes back more than twenty years to the smallpox eradication program. The history of the eradication and subsequent debate and research on smallpox occupy the remainder of the book until the end, when the two diseases/bioweapons are linked — the anthrax investigators worry about whether the anthrax mailings might contain smallpox, too. If so, it would have …

Review of 'The Demon in the Freezer' on 'Goodreads'

One of the scariest books you will ever read!

We have to be really glad that we "only" got a Corona pandemic and not a global weaponized smallpox outbreak! Man that stuff sounds nasty, and it's just sitting in some freezer somewhere.

“Ultimately, humans make mistakes,”

Brrrr ....

~~~

I did really like this quote though, as my 3rd child is due any day now

"I recalled when my son had been born, and how, minutes afterward, I had held his tiny hand, impressed with its perfection. I recalled the times when my children had been sick or had needed comforting, and I had held their hands. I recalled the sense of time slipping by as I noted how their hands were growing, gradually filling more of my hand. They might one day hold my hand when the life had left it."