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More reviews by John Walsh
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China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic by Karl Taro Greenfeld
Prosperity in Guangzhou meant the era of wild flavour: Korean karaoke girls in slit skirts, foreign cigarettes and exotic animal meat -- snake, civet, camel, mountain lion, monkey, pangolin, muskrat, if it could be caught, then it would be for sale at the Wild Animal Markets. Jammed together in cages, scarcely able to move, the animals mixed their body fluids, their faeces and their viruses. The combination had never been brought together before, although the confluence of humans, animals and unhealthy atmosphere in southern China had helped bring about outbreaks of flu in the past that had led deadly epidemics. Now the random mutations of the many viruses involved produced one which found its home in humans and managed to spread via droplets, while people sneezed or vomited or just stayed close to another person.
This was the birth of what has come to be known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS. It killed 884 people, according to author KARL TARO GREENFELD. Secrecy and lack of reporting means it probably killed many more. Yet this was not the great epidemic killer which scientists are predicting. The epidemic that will come will do so, they say, when and not if. What have we learned from this comparatively mild dry run?
This is the subject matter of Greenfeld's reportage of the SARS epidemic. At a breakneck pace, his narrative takes us across the world as the search for the virus and a possible cure for its actions spreads exponentially. While the virus was active in China, the spread was steady but geographically quite limited. Once the virus traveled to Hong Kong, via perhaps just one individual, then it found both a captive audience and a means of rapidly spreading around the world. Hong Kong is of course one of the most internationalized cities in the world. As a result of the sickness of one man, others sharing the same hotel floor spread the virus to Hanoi, Bangkok, Toronto and, perhaps most dangerously, to Beijing.
It is at this point that the perspective of the narrative changes from the desperate search for a cure to the problem of obtaining information from the Chinese government. As long as the government refused to acknowledge the existence of the problem, let alone scale -- initially to stop a national panic disturbing the serene atmosphere of the Party Congress -- then there was a clear and present danger that the epidemic would explode in scale. How could the World Health Organisation team or the researchers at the universities of Hong Kong gain access to the patients and the samples that might help them answer the problems the SARS virus caused? Would a whistle-blower come forward? Fortunately, of course, the transmission rates were not quite fast enough to outstrip the ability of the world's best virologists to track down the victims and stop further infections. Fortune is not guaranteed in the future, of course.
This fascinating, slightly frenetic book is full of gems and is clearly written by someone who has a deep knowledge of China and the ways in which it works. Not the least interesting revelation is the reason why viruses spread to humans or, indeed, any creature which they go on to kill. After all, pretty much the only discernible purpose that a virus has for its semi-life is to replicate. So if it kills its host, then it is unable to spread any further and therefore dooms itself to extinction. Why would it do such a thing? The answer appears to be that it will set out to kill those life forms which it deems to be a threat to its natural host. And since the SARS virus considered civet cats to be their natural hosts, humans were the main threat -- after all, who was eating the civets? So, all humans must die. Chilling.
This book will appeal to general readers interested in the spread of the SARS epidemic and the possibilities for it recurring or, more likely, for a mutation in the current bird flu outbreak which will start spreading more rapidly and fatally among people. Scientists and specialists may require something with a different approach. But this is thrilling stuff.
John Walsh
20/04/2006
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John Walsh is Assistant Professor at Shinawatra International University, Bangkok. |
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