Read Online The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett - Free Book Online
Authors: Laurie Garrett
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(leukemia and some other neoplasms, some respiratory diseases and strokes) 7
As the 1960s opened, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare convened a team of medical experts to decide the future mission of the entire government public health effort. Praising the accomplishments
of the 1950s, the advisory team declared that âscience and technology have completely transformed manâs concepts of the universe, of his place in it, and of his own physiological and psychological systems. Manâs mastery over nature has been vastly extended, including his capacity to cope with diseases and other threats to human life and health.â 8
By 1967 U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart would be so utterly convinced of imminent success that he would tell a White House gathering of state and territorial health officers that it was time to close the book on infectious diseases and shift all national attention (and dollars) to what he termed âthe New Dimensionsâ of health: chronic diseases. 9
âIn the words of the song, âThe fundamental things go by,â polio and measles can be eradicated and should be eradicated,â Stewart would tell his exuberant audience. âVenereal disease and tuberculosis can be sharply reduced and should be sharply reduced. These are tasks that no one will perform for us. So long as a preventable disease remains, it must be prevented, and public health must be the primary force for prevention.â
Not content to stop with the predicted eradication of all known infectious diseases, the optimists set out in search of rare and remote disease agents. Biology research stations were established throughout the Southern Hemisphere, staffed largely by scientists from the Northern Hemisphere. All sorts of agencies funded and administered these outposts, including the Rockefeller Foundation, agencies of the governments of France, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as a variety of small private interests.
Johnsonâs Panama Canal Zone laboratory was just such an outpost. The U.S. government alone operated twenty-eight overseas laboratories, and the Rockefeller Foundationâs Virus Program operated facilities in eight countries through which over sixty viruses would be discovered between 1951 and 1971. 10
But much of what these searching scientists were to find proved terrifying. As officials prepared to uncork celebratory champagne, Johnson and his colleagues were unlocking some of natureâs nastiest secrets.
Boosters of the 1950s and early 1960s had some basis, born of ignorance, for their optimism: they knew comparatively little about genetics, microbial evolution, the human immune system, or disease ecology. Given the state of knowledge in the public health world of that day, it may have seemed appropriate to view infectious diseases in simple cause-and-effect terms. Seen in such a reductionist manner, problems and solutions appeared obvious and readily conquerable, bravado warranted.
As early as the 1930s scientists guessed that the genetic traits of large creatures, such as plants, animals, and humans, were carried in packages called chromosomes. These structures, which, when examined through a microscope, resembled dark, squiggly worms, were inside the central core, or nucleus, of every cell in a plant or animal. By manipulating chromosomes in test tubes, scientists could change the ways cells looked or grew; exposing
chromosomes to radiation, for example, could transform healthy tissue into cancer colonies.
True, Gregor Mendel showed in 1865 that some characteristics were passed on as dominant traits from one generation to another, while other genetic characteristics were recessive. But nobody knew exactly how all this worked, why blue-eyed parents had blue-eyed children, or a bacterium could seem to suddenly develop the ability to withstand higher temperatures than normally tolerated by its species.
Until 1944 nobody knew
As the 1960s opened, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare convened a team of medical experts to decide the future mission of the entire government public health effort. Praising the accomplishments
of the 1950s, the advisory team declared that âscience and technology have completely transformed manâs concepts of the universe, of his place in it, and of his own physiological and psychological systems. Manâs mastery over nature has been vastly extended, including his capacity to cope with diseases and other threats to human life and health.â 8
By 1967 U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart would be so utterly convinced of imminent success that he would tell a White House gathering of state and territorial health officers that it was time to close the book on infectious diseases and shift all national attention (and dollars) to what he termed âthe New Dimensionsâ of health: chronic diseases. 9
âIn the words of the song, âThe fundamental things go by,â polio and measles can be eradicated and should be eradicated,â Stewart would tell his exuberant audience. âVenereal disease and tuberculosis can be sharply reduced and should be sharply reduced. These are tasks that no one will perform for us. So long as a preventable disease remains, it must be prevented, and public health must be the primary force for prevention.â
Not content to stop with the predicted eradication of all known infectious diseases, the optimists set out in search of rare and remote disease agents. Biology research stations were established throughout the Southern Hemisphere, staffed largely by scientists from the Northern Hemisphere. All sorts of agencies funded and administered these outposts, including the Rockefeller Foundation, agencies of the governments of France, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as a variety of small private interests.
Johnsonâs Panama Canal Zone laboratory was just such an outpost. The U.S. government alone operated twenty-eight overseas laboratories, and the Rockefeller Foundationâs Virus Program operated facilities in eight countries through which over sixty viruses would be discovered between 1951 and 1971. 10
But much of what these searching scientists were to find proved terrifying. As officials prepared to uncork celebratory champagne, Johnson and his colleagues were unlocking some of natureâs nastiest secrets.
Boosters of the 1950s and early 1960s had some basis, born of ignorance, for their optimism: they knew comparatively little about genetics, microbial evolution, the human immune system, or disease ecology. Given the state of knowledge in the public health world of that day, it may have seemed appropriate to view infectious diseases in simple cause-and-effect terms. Seen in such a reductionist manner, problems and solutions appeared obvious and readily conquerable, bravado warranted.
As early as the 1930s scientists guessed that the genetic traits of large creatures, such as plants, animals, and humans, were carried in packages called chromosomes. These structures, which, when examined through a microscope, resembled dark, squiggly worms, were inside the central core, or nucleus, of every cell in a plant or animal. By manipulating chromosomes in test tubes, scientists could change the ways cells looked or grew; exposing
chromosomes to radiation, for example, could transform healthy tissue into cancer colonies.
True, Gregor Mendel showed in 1865 that some characteristics were passed on as dominant traits from one generation to another, while other genetic characteristics were recessive. But nobody knew exactly how all this worked, why blue-eyed parents had blue-eyed children, or a bacterium could seem to suddenly develop the ability to withstand higher temperatures than normally tolerated by its species.
Until 1944 nobody knew
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