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Book Reviews of Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
Scourge The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
Author: Jonathan B. Tucker
ISBN-13: 9780802139399
ISBN-10: 0802139396
Publication Date: 8/12/2002
Pages: 320
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
 1

3.5 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Type: Paperback
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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hardtack avatar reviewed Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox on + 2572 more book reviews
Due to my love of history, I was hoping for more on smallpox and its effect on human history. But this was only a very small part of the book. There is more on the medical attempts to control smallpox, much of which I was already familiar with. I use to write and lecture on how insects, primarily insect-vectored diseases, changed history. As a result, I also became very interested in non-insect-vectored diseases.

After spending several chapters describing how the disease was eradicated world-wide, the book spends a great deal of time on the development of smallpox as a "military weapon," with the superpowers and others playing games with each other.

Plus, it included a review of a high-level U.S. military/health exercise using smallpox as a bio-terrorism weapon against the U.S. by extremists, which proved to be a failure for the government, very similar to the current government failure with Covid-19. As a result, readers will also realize where we went wrong with Covid-19.