The Demon in the Freezer

Richard Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer is a nonfiction account of the recent history of bioweapons and epidemic diseases; his focus for much of the book is smallpox, the “demon” of the title. The book begins with a discussion of the lethal bioweapons attack that took place early in October of 2001. In this instance, letters containing anthrax were mailed to publications and Senate offices in the United States. However, researchers at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases (USAMRIID) were worried that the anthrax envelopes might contain smallpox as well, a virus that could prove much more deadly than anthrax bacteria.

Preston then shifts his focus to the eradication of smallpox, an effort that consumed scientists and fieldworkers around the globe. Though a series of deadly smallpox cases erupted in Germany in the early 1970s, smallpox eradicators succeeded in containing the damage from the disease and—under the guidance of D.A. Henderson—driving smallpox from its possible strongholds in Asia. The final naturally occurring case of the virus arose in 1977. Officially, smallpox traces are preserved in only two locations—one laboratory freezer facility in the United States and a second in Russia. It is impossible to say, however, whether other countries have clandestine smallpox samples.