"Richard Preston - The Demon In The Freezer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

Woodstock festival, the cell would be an object about the size of a Volkswagen bus parked at the real
festival. Bacterial cells are smaller than the cells of animals. If a single cell of E. coli (the train type of
bacteria that lives in the human gut) were placed on the Woodstock on this page, it would be an object
the size of a smallish watermelon, perhaps sitting on the grass beside the Volkswagen bus. A spore of
anthrax would be an orange. On that same scale, a particle of 'smallpox would be a mulberry. (The
particles of the common cold are the smallest virus particles found in nature; a cold virus would be a
marijuana seed under the seat of the Volkswagen bus parked at Woodstock.) Three to five mulberries of
smallpox floating into the air out of the Woodstock dot on the page would be invisible to the eye and
senses, yet they could start a global pandemic of smallpox.

As Dr. Richter pondered the view in the microscope, he was not unprepared for the national
emergency it implied. Three years earlier, he had laid out a plan for what would be done if smallpox
broke out on his watch. Now it was happening. He lined up an older pox expert, Dr. Josef Posch, and
they were joined by another colleague, Professor Helmut Ippen. They organized a quarantine at the
hospital, they got vaccine ready, and they gathered biohazard equipment, which Richter had previously
stockpiled. He also made a telephone call to the offices of the Smallpox Eradication Program at the
World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, asking for help.
The WHO occupies a building constructed in the nineteen fifties on a hill above Geneva. It is
surrounded by the flags of the world's nations. In 1970, the Smallpox Eradication Program (SEP) was a
relatively new effort at the WHO-it was inaugurated in 1966. The smallpox program operated out of a
cluster of tiny cubicles on the sixth floor-the cubicles were exactly four feet wide, but they had a
magnificent view southward across Lake Geneva toward Mont Blanc. Although the cubicles of the
smallpox program were tiny and jammed together, the unit had a deserted feel, because at any given time
more than half of the staff members were away, dealing with smallpox in various parts of the earth.
Dr. Richter ended up talking with an American doctor on the staff named Paul F. Wehrle, who
spoke a little German. Dr. Wehrle (his name sounds like whirly) was a tall, thin, courtly epidemiologist
with brown hair and green eyes who had a habit of wearing a jacket and tie with a white shirt when he
went into the field, because he felt that a well-dressed doctor would inspire confidence in the midst of the
shit terror of a smallpox outbreak. Wehrle now lives in quiet retirement with his wife in Pasadena. "I
have unfortunately turned eighty," he remarked to me, "but fortunately I have all of my hair, most of my
teeth, and at least some of my brain."
 A single smallpox virus particle (virion) from a pustule in human skin. Negative contrast
electron microscopy, magnified about 150,000 times, showing the "mulberry structure of the
proteins on the surface of the particle. The photograph was made in 1966 by Frederick A.
Murphy, who could be described as the Ansel Adams of electron microscopy.



Diagram of a smallpox virus particle showing its surface and internal structure. Its
dumbbell core (the dogbone) is visible; the dumbbell holds thegenome of the virus, which consists
of about 187,000 letters, or nucleotides, of DNA. (Both images courtesy of Frederick A. Murphy,
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California at Davis.)
 When Dr. Richter told him what was going on in Meschede, Dr. Wehrle understood the picture
only too well. The WHO rule was to keep smallpox patients out of hospitals, because they could spread
the virus all too easily-hospitals are amplifiers of variola. Smallpox could essentially sack a hospital,
infecting doctors and nurses and patients, and from there the virus would continue out into the community
and beyond. The WHO recommended keeping smallpox patients at home under the care of vaccinated
relatives. Since there was nothing a doctor could do for a patient with smallpox, it was just as well to
keep the patient away from doctors.
Wehrle went down the hall to a double cubicle that was occupied by a tall, assertive medical