Beating Back the Devil by Maryn McKenna, Free Press, $26, ISBN 0743251326 Reviewed by Jonathan Beard
WORKPLACE hazards don鈥檛 usually include death. It may be a daily reality for the 鈥渟pecial forces鈥� of the US Centers for Disease Control. They face bandits when helping refugees in the Congo and risk death from SARS, a fifth of whose victims were health workers. What keeps them going?
The CDC are famous for their epidemiology, and we tend to think of them as scientists bending over microscopes at the agency鈥檚 Atlanta headquarters. The unit called the Epidemic Intelligence Service roams rather than remains in the lab. It is sent all over the US and around the world to investigate the latest threats to public health.
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In Beating Back the Devil, newspaper reporter Maryn McKenna paints a vivid portrait of these young researchers and their tense, often exhausting lives as they deal with outbreaks of SARS, AIDS, malaria, drug-resistant TB and other ailments. By devoting each chapter to one disease and one scientist, she emphasises the drama of their assignments. Her reports from Malawi and Vietnam are especially good.