The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

I'd just as soon not have read The Demon In The Freezer if it meant I could remain ignorant of the fact that vaccine resistant smallpox and anthrax are already undoubtedly in the hands of terrorists and that a large scale bioterrorist attack on the United States is more a question of when than if.


I'd really rather not know that the former Soviet Union was producing weapons-grade smallpox by the TON (what the fuck?) as late as 2001 on the very eve of 9/11, and that now, or so defected Russian scientists say, the authorities in the former Soviet Union have no idea where the tons of weapons-grade smallpox went.  They fucking "lost it," so they say.  Er, "sold it" is more like it.

I'm indefatigably disturbed by the paradoxical fact that despite the worldwide "eradication" of smallpox in India by 1978, the United States and Soviet Union decided nevertheless to freeze smallpox and keep it "safely stored".  Presumably doing so, so that in case it got into the "wrong hands" (yeah, like Russian scientist hands looking to sell it to the Taliban or Al-Quaeda or unhinged Americans like Timothy McVeigh), so that a "vaccine" (i.e., a weapon of mass destruction guaranteed to "vaccinate" it's victims from their lives) might be manufactured from the stored samples. If the Morons-That-Be had simply decided to destroy all smallpox in the first place, every damn drop of it like they said they would; like they signed the damn treaty to, no one would have to worry about it right now falling into the wrong hands because eradicated smallpox truly would have meant ERADICATED SMALLPOX.


The Demon In The Freezer reads like a Le Carre spy thriller, full of international intrigue and traitors, laden with suspense and backstabbings and terror as the United Nations inspectors confront covert bioweapons operations in Russia, and meet those "they-think-we're-all-stupid" Russian scientists who deny everything, the lying potato sacks of shit, straight to the UNs faces.  "We no remember where we put de vials of smallpox". 
 
I'd really rather not know about all this scary stuff; about how potentially close we all are to an eminent bioterrorist apocalpyse a la The Stand, but Richard Preston made the thankfully slim book mighty hard to put down.

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