Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak J. Guillemin University of California Press 1999, 321 pp.

One annoyance in the book is a continued inappropriate use of the present tense, resulting in sentences like "In early September 1998, I fly to England to attend the Third International Workshop on Anthrax...." This style of writing seems to have originated in American culture with newsreel films as an affectation to create artificial excitement by inaccurately portraying past events as if they are occurring in the present. However, in my opinion such abuse of the English language, rather than adding excitement, merely subverts any sense of historical accuracy. A sentence taken out of context from one of these newsreels, or from this book, could easily be misunderstood by someone unfamiliar with the subject. For example, one recent TV program (which is being broadcast as I write this) used the sentence, "For the past 8 years, Hoffman has been studying the properties of ergot, a fungus that grows on rye." - referring to a study done in 1943. It may be too much to expect TV producers to use the English language properly, but it is a disappointment to see this trend make its way into books.

Although the author reminds us on several occasions that she is a female sociologist, there is surprisingly little dogmatic feminist rhetoric or politically correct polemic in the book. Instead, the author comes across as a decent, humanistic layman, who is capable of withholding judgment until the facts are available, but who also adopts an emotional, intuitive approach toward her subject. This makes the book as much about the author's impressions and feelings as about the incident itself. It is full of concrete details about the author's visit to Sverdlovsk, such as the exploding light bulbs in her hotel room and the problems with her shoes, as well as the author's emotional responses to her interviews with relatives of the victims. The author also expresses this humanistic concern toward both the relatives and the victims of the epidemic, whose names are included in an appendix.

However, because the author has no training in science or medicine, the medical findings of the team reported here are hopelessly garbled. The author does not appear to believe the conclusions of the UTMB pathologist on the team. She is also not competent to present or evaluate any of the medical or pathological data, and does not try to do so. However, the absence of these data is a significant failing since the group's conclusion rests entirely on the differential diagnosis of inhalational vs. intestinal anthrax. According to the book, all of the data accumulated by the team during their first trip was inconclusive. It was only with the fortuitous subsequent arrival of epidemiologic data from their Russian sources that they were finally able to point unequivocally to an airborne release of spores from Compound 19, the Soviet bioweapons facility, as the cause, which the Russian government had already admitted. Some of these epidemiological results are presented in the book. However, there is no medical or pathological data, or any scientific information on the nature of the disease itself. The book would have been greatly improved if the author had cooperated with other members of the team, particularly the pathologist, and written a more comprehensive and credible report rather than a work for the popular press as this appears to be.

Ultimately, as a sociologist, the author also cannot resist waxing moralistic about bioweapons and the responsibilities of scientists, such as those who created the A-bomb. I have often wondered what the reaction of Americans would have been if, as is often suggested, the Manhattan project scientists had refused to finish the bomb. Japan would most likely have become divided into a communist North and capitalist South Japan. Their country and culture would have been crushed into oblivion by the Allied invasion. Millions of additional Japanese and as many as a million additional Americans would have died. In all likelihood, the American public would have blamed the scientists for this and branded them as traitors. For those asked by their country to create an atomic bomb, it was a no-win situation. It is too easy for a sociologist 55 years later to moralize, especially if the historical context in which the weapons were created is conveniently ignored.

Despite these failings, the book contrasts favorably with Virus X , which is little more than mindless scaremongering about Ebola and AIDS. This book concentrates almost entirely on the personalities and, for some reason, hair color, of the protagonists, and makes no attempt to conceal the author's personal prejudices and pre-formed opinions. In fairness, however, I found it impossible to read more than the first few pages of the poorly-written Virus X.

Although there are some footnotes in Anthrax, many of these refer to literary works or document banal social phenomena like the fact that visitors to a strange location have trouble recognizing their surroundings. As a story of the author's personal discovery of science and her attempt to understand and humanize the Sverdlovsk incident, the book is well-written and interesting; but as a scientific or historical document of a very important historical event or as a source of information on the disease, it is a disappointment. A much better description of the epidemiology and pathology of anthrax in general can be found in the WHO anthrax report, at the FAS website.

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