Anthrax
The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak
Chapter One
Anthrax: Accursed Fire and Biological Weapon
Tuesday, June 2, 1992. After a long transatlantic flight from New York,
our research team arrives in the new post-Soviet Russia, a nation that six
months before did not exist. We are in the first stage of a trip to
investigate the cause of the worst anthrax epidemic recorded in a modern
industrial nation. The outbreak occurred in April and May 1979 in
Sverdlovsk, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains, nine hundred miles
east of Moscow. According to Soviet reports, by the time it was over, at
least sixty-four people had died from this rare disease.
Leading the team is Matthew Meselson, a Harvard University biologist. I am
the expedition's anthropologist, from Boston College, a Jesuit university
that has unblinkingly supported my research for nearly twenty years.
Matthew and I are also husband and wife. Doing research with a spouse can
be problematic, especially when both are strong-minded individuals.
Working on a politically charged issue ... read full excerpt from Anthrax:The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak ebook
