Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (review)

Jeanne Guillemin. Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. xviii + 321 pp. Ill. $27.50 (0-520-22204-0).

Between 4 April and 7 May 1979, sixty-two people died of what was quickly diagnosed as anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains. An unknown number of livestock also died of anthrax at much the same time. A degree of mystery surrounded the outbreak, then and in subsequent years. According to the Soviet public health authorities, the outbreak was the result of eating diseased meat. According to Soviet dissidents, who speculated on a much larger number of victims, the outbreak was the result of an accident at the military Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk, a known center for biological weapons research. The purpose of the expeditions recounted in Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak, was to elucidate the nature and causes of the outbreak. The driving force was Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard, whose work "has been a consistent, unique force against biological and chemical weapons for more than thirty years" (p. xii). The narrator of this account of the investigation, Jeanne Guillemin, is his wife and a professor of sociology at Boston College. She tells the story in the first person and makes it into something of a detective story.

The result might rank low by the usual criteria of the genre. Although there is a choice of suspects, there is little real mystery as to the villains, although their case (alibi) is plausible. Anthrax has long been a source of major losses among Russian livestock; it is easy to envisage an accident in Soviet meatworks and rendering plants. However, the local population, despite or perhaps because of the volume of official pronouncements on the subject, seems never to have been in doubt; they were well aware that anything that happened in Compound 19 was likely to have unpleasant consequences for the neighbors.

The pathological work of Russian and American scientists helped to confirm this, breaking new ground in analyzing the different outcomes from respiratory and gastrointestinal anthrax. Guillemin's own epidemiological investigations provide the conclusive verification. They also yield the most attractive aspect of the book: her characters, whether American or Russian scientists, Russian bureaucrats or the victims and their families, are far superior to any found in detective novels. Her evident empathy with her characters, whether victims or villains, rounds off a fascinating portrait of a society in transition, at a time of some hope for its future. Some of the incidents she describes enhance our understanding as to why those hopes have presently been dashed. It is interesting to note that Boris Yeltsin was the boss of the Sverdlovsk region at the time of the outbreak.

A variety of other themes are woven into the account of the investigation, including a potted history of anthrax and of its central role in biological weapons research in the East and the West. Professor Guillemin also draws on an extensive academic literature in her reflections on the social dynamics of the Soviet and post-Soviet system. These last, together with her reflections on global politics, I found the least satisfactory aspect of the book. The tension lessens, the prose becomes somewhat labored, and she can sometimes sound portentous.

Unlike a detective novel, not all loose ends are satisfactorily tied together at the end. There is still doubt on the precise nature of the research conducted in Compound 19, and on what went wrong. The Russian army remains reluctant to admit to full responsibility for the outbreak, and there had been no compensation for the victims' families when the book went to press. But this is not a detective story--this is real life in a society undergoing stresses difficult to comprehend in the West. Professor Guillemin deserves the highest praise for telling a fascinating story, enlightening us on the pathology and epidemiology...