麻豆传媒

Scourge by Jonathan Tucker, Atlantic Monthly Press, $26, ISBN
0871138301

I DIDN鈥橳 know my own country, Canada, might owe its existence to biological
warfare. During the American War of Independence, the British commander
defending Quebec sent civilians infected with smallpox out among Benedict
Arnold鈥檚 besieging troops. The resulting outbreak broke the siege.

That鈥檚 history. Is there really anything new to be said about smallpox?
Plenty, to judge by the number of exclamation marks I have scribbled in the
margins of my copy. It鈥檚 tough going to cover everything from the invention of
vaccination to the politics of the World Health Organization in one book, but I
had trouble putting Jonathan Tucker鈥檚 Scourgedown.

But isn鈥檛 smallpox itself history, since its much-vaunted eradication in the
1970s? Possibly the most fascinating part of the book is its highly personalised
account of that hair-raising and sometimes very unorthodox campaign. D. A.
Henderson, who led the assault, once told me they had 鈥渢o break every rule in
the book鈥� to eradicate smallpox. Now I know that was an understatement.

The scariest part of this book, though, is its account of why many people
believe that smallpox is not, in fact, dead. Tucker neatly recounts the past
decade鈥檚 horrifying revelations about biological weapons research, again with a
few surprises鈥攅ven for a specialist.

Should we destroy the last official samples of the virus, now in freezers in
the US and Russia? Could some mad terrorist release smallpox again? Read Scourge
and decide.