On Tuesday evening, October 22, the phone rang. It was a federal official I have known for years. “The U.S. government can’t sit on this much longer,” he told me. His normally calm voice was cracking. “Three people down in Florida have a rash; 30 are in quarantine. The CDC is all over it.” He […]
Wendy Orent
Wendy Orent, an anthropologist, has written on smallpox proliferation for the Sciences and for the Los Angeles Times.
Posted inArticle
The Smallpox Wars:
New fears of bioterrorism in the wake of the September 11th attacks have made smallpox front-page news. Could an epidemic be unleashed intentionally? In this 1999 article from The American Prospect, Wendy Orent examines the history and politics of smallpox eradication. And she makes a persuasive case for why we should hang on to our […]
Posted inFeatures
After Anthrax
Poking my head down, looking into the abyss of a four-story-tall, 20,000-liter fermenter, which was one of 10 there to produce anthrax for weapons, made me shudder. It made me wonder, what were they thinking? This was a big facility, [with] just an awesome capability to destroy life. In a mobilization period, it was going […]