9781422280249

The advent of modern medicine has consigned the great epidemics to the past, although it is easily forgotten how recent a development this has been. Less than a century ago, influenza, or flu—which today is regarded as a minor, if highly unpleasant, illness—broke out in what was almost certainly the most destructive epidemic in human history. The global epidemic of 1918 is thought to have started here in America, before being taken to Europe by U.S. soldiers on their way to World War I. Casualties in that fearful conflict would eventually be dwarfed by the death toll of a disease that killed 675,000 Americans—and perhaps as many as 50 million people worldwide. “Stand Together!” New Jersey postal worker Norma Wallace was one of several affected by inhalation anthrax—contracted in the line of duty. But when released from intensive care after a decidedly difficult few days, she had a message of inspiration for the American people.  “Even though we have been confronted by a deadly disease, there is recovery, there is hope,” Norma told a news conference in New Jersey on November 5, 2001. “We don’t have to succumb to it,” she went on, impressing all by her dignity and calm. “We can fight together. We can stand together.” Since then, no epidemic in the developed world has come close to the terrible power of the plagues of old—although the scale of AIDS in Africa, as well as the Ebola and Zika viruses, in the developing world is ominous. Dangerous microbes can adapt genetically to keep “one jump ahead” of the scientific medicine that once promised to wipe them out, a fact that leaves doctors feeling less confident than they did just a generation ago. A Recent Reality The use of biological weapons is often assumed to be a comparatively recent threat. However, some scholars suggest that medieval, and even ancient Assyrian, soldiers catapulted diseased bodies over the walls of cities they were besieging, and the Romans are said to have tossed dead and rotting livestock into enemies’ water supplies.

12

D efending O ur N ation