Dread by Philip Alcabes

From The Week of June 06, 2010

Though Dread serves well enough as a history of infectious disease and the terror it inspires in humanity, Mr. Alcabes, an expert in public health, goes beyond the presentation of his research to lecture us and the media on what should and should not be considered an epidemic. And while specificity of language is an important aspect to public life, it's hardly relevant to a book about the human response to contagion.

From the Black Plague to Cholera, Mr. Alcabes does an admirable job enlightening the reader on the origins and the symptoms of the great afflictions that have hounded humanity over the last millennia. I found particularly harrowing his account of the rise of industrialism as a cause for major diseases. Industrialism requires urban areas to properly function. The one constant of urban areas is people, lots of people, crammed into apartment buildings, office towers, factories. Many diseases require substantial populations in order to become major menaces, hence the rise of Cholera which, prior to the modern world, was localized to various waterways, away from which it was relatively easy for human populations to move when some among them fell ill. Ironically, though city-dwelling may inflame disease, it also concentrates the people necessary to solve for the inflammation, a delightful example of how the disease almost creates the conditions for its own cure.

This is all quite interesting and edifying, but it's Mr. Alcabes second, narrative thread that turns Dread into an irritant. Though he touches on the psychological affects of infectious disease, much of this portion of the book is disappointingly consumed by a hectoring tone adopted towards the media, scientists and, to some extent, the public. Mr. Alcabes believes that, thanks to various bits of mental programming, historical leftovers of genetics and culture, we constantly over-inflate the danger from the contagions that spring up in our world. He argues that this overreaction to the danger reveals itself in the nomenclature, "society is suffering from the obesity epidemic," which is clearly not a contagion. But while this is a fair enough criticism to level at the media, blaming scientists misses the completely obvious. Mr. Alcabes argues that the flus, Avian and swine, that have recently plagued us have proven to be much to do about nothing. But scientists don't just worry about what the contagion can do now; they worry about what it can morph into, in the future, if not dealt with. For instance, it is difficult for a human to contract Avian flu. One has to almost handle the infected bird to get it and even then it's not a certain thing. But if Avian flu mutates from a bird-to-human contagion into a human-to-human contagion, then Avian flu becomes a massive, human problem for which there isn't a cure. That is why efforts are made by scientists to stomp it out and by governments to warn the public. It's not just psychological, it's practical.

This is a good book which presents both a history an argument. The former is tight and compelling. The latter is monotonous and insufficient. (2/5 Stars)