"The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging WITH A TITLE like "The Coming Plague" and a flaming yellow and orange soil cover. one expecis a sensationalist, pseudo-scientific hand wringer.
Surprise! You will find no false posturing here, no Doomsday agonizing. just a sober clarity.
"The Coming Plague" is an astonishing look at the environment that humans live in, at the ecology of poopic. It is a scichunc work and ils particular measuring device is the well-being or sickness of the peoples o e w • on t tac accutace the measure is the vulnerability of our well-being to challenges by micro-organisms; challenges not a bit differeot than many others that have occurred over the last 3 million years.
Garrett presents her views indirectly at fist, with a series of exciting narratives of the detection, struggle nificant epidemics of recent years.
Afraid
Her scientists have names and faces; some live, some die. All of them are afraid at times. Many retire exhausted. For all ber protagonists, the budgets, staffing, and inadequacies of nice nocne mn tankie To illustrate the relationship between social imbalance and discase, Garrett focuses on the appearance of new diseases, drug-resistant strains. and the spreading of discase in new wavs. These are the masor factors that enable micro-organisms to overwbelm the body's natural defences.
In most Third World cases, the roots of disease, particulariy those that cause sweeping epidemics. could be addressed by the traditional means of the public health department. But they are The World Bank has determined provide sanitation, clean drinking water, and adequate nourishment.
For example, supporting Garrett's chesis, Robbins and Freeman state in the 1988 Scientific American, "VacciM aS C CAuSYc. casier to implement and sometimes more erecave than ouner pobuc nealh approaches now being pursued to El Salvador: urban overcrowing and poverty breed disease varying degroes."
If one looks at humanity as if time stood still, and people are only bere to run a print shop for dollars, then that view may be justified.
One of the central points of her book is to demonstrate that the human conand science tries to keep up.
Garrett convinces us very carly in her book that microbes cannot be trusted. From time to time, a drug-fesistant variant simply appears. In an equally arbitrary manner, a new microbe strain will infect vaccinated individuals. (She tells the borrifying story of dengue fever viruses #1, #2, f4, and 84.) And sometimes a mutant will appear, such as HIV or the Hanta virus.
She also convinces us pronounced changes in humanity's way of life opens the door to "new" diseases that may really be old, formerly harmless ones.
Imperialism
Asthe Third World began to feel the effects of imperialism. people were forced from the countryside to the cities to look for work in overcrowded sweatshops, to sleep in cardboard leantos, to live piled one atop the next These slums became the Third World In the current Intenational Viewpoint Catherine Samary on the imperialist carve-up of Bosnia, megacities. By 1995. 23 of the world's top 40 cities (chose over 5 million people) were Third World cities, as were I1 of the world's 16 cities topping the 10 million mark. All these cities are public health nightmares. Garrett de votes a chapter to the consequences of official indifference to living conditions in the megacities, explaining how discases that until recently were found exclusively in rural areas are now urban scourges. A diverse group of internal parasites, round worms, tape worms, protozoa, fileria, and a host of Monster slum cities re-create the conditions of the medieval city. With those conditions return plague-like diseases doctors thought centuries past unpronounceable discases appeared in the cities with a virulence never seen There were few vaccines. Even if the goverments of the Third World countrics wanted to institute measures for public health. they had no money to do so. They already had their backs to the wall just meeting debt service for old loans from the IMr. une wore Bank, and various capitalist acencics In the case of the Latin American countries. Garrett says, 'In 1980 the Latin American nations collectively were receiving from their externa) creditors - major banks, the Interna. revolution brought by imperialism to the undeveloped world created monster slum cities that in turn re-created the conditions of the And with those conditions returned plague-like discases that the doctors had thought were centuries past.
"Third World'
The author continues this theme in an examination of health conditions in wealtny industrar culies. fere snc ihtroduces a most awkward term, "third. worldisation".
She describes the process where the cast-offs of capitalist society must live under conditions no better than those found in the slums of Caracas. Sao Paulo, or Manila. The constant stress 'tems makes them susceptible to once rare diseases. To make things worse, official "Get them off the streets" police harassment herds these people into close contact where discases can only spread. Where the HIV virus has further weakened the immune system, it was found that 51 per cent of indigents had MultipleDrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB). an essentially incurable discasc that any of us can coctract by casual association with a carrier.
The Coming Plague" is a prodigious work of 750 pages, 1326 notes. numerous charts and graphs, and an index.
It is accessible to anyone with a poco axuonary, a medial dictionary or a volume such as "Protessiona) Guide to Diseases. " Springhouse. Pa.. (updated regularly). The book is very well written, with jargon at an absolute minimum. • Reprinted from the US monthly. Socialist Action OCTOBER Until 3 Dec 'RECYCLE II' - a show of prints by Stuart J Bullen, the Greenhouse, The Drill Hall, 16 Chenies St. WC1 11am-830pm Mon-Sat: 1pm-5pm Sun; Mon eve women only. Sat 28 TUC demonstration: Unite against racism. meet 12 noon Platt Fields for march to Albert Square. Leatlets in bulk available free from Kay Carbury at TUC on 0171 636 4030. NOVEMBER Sat 4 STUDENT Assembly Against Racism conference10am-5.30pm Tower Hamlets College, Poplar High St., E14, by Poplar DLR tickets £5/E3 from SAAR, PO Box 3782, London N1 ODD. SOCIALIST Campaign Group Supporters Network Forum 1pm. Sun 5 IS THIS where we came in? - Jewish Socialists' Group day school 10am5pm Caxton House, Archway. N19 with Steve Cohen, Bill MacKeith, Helen Bamber and others tickets £12/E5 trom JSG, BM 3725, London WC1N 3XX. Tues 7 OPPOSE fascist "National Democrats' Centotaph march. Planning meeting 7.30pm Colin Roach Centre, 56 Clarence Road, E5. Thurs 9 MANCHESTER Socialist Outlook Forum on Bosnia 7.30pm Manchester Town Hall with speaker Geoff Ryan. Sat 18 SOCIALIST Campaign Group Supporters Network AGM, Manchester Town Hall. Sat 25 STOP hospital closures conference sponsored gency 11.00am to 4.00pm ULU, Malet St. London. WC1. DECEMBER Sat 2 & Sun 3