"Infectious disease is the deadliest enemy faced by all of humankind," according to Michael Osterholm, an internationally known epidemiologist. In Deadliest Enemy, he gathers scientific research, case studies and analysis of current health policies into a thorough consideration of various microbes, bacteria and viruses that have the potential to be the world's next pandemic.
He begins with HIV/AIDS, an infectious disease unidentified prior to the early 1980s, which now infects an estimated 40 million people worldwide, with millions of new cases each year. Malaria and TB still kill thousands, while other illnesses, such as toxic shock syndrome, Ebola, Zika, MERS and SARS, have found their way into worldwide news as outbreaks have cropped up. Osterholm shows how easy it is for diseases to be transmitted from one continent to another, and he points out how unprepared the world is to fight most of these diseases on a global scale, with vaccines in short supply or nonexistent. He amply discusses the threat of bioterrorism, along with the probability that antibiotics will no longer be effective against certain diseases in the near future. His intent is not to create alarm with his findings, but rather to open the doorway to discussion. Osterholm hopes such conversation will lead to new policies so that when, not if, the next pandemic strikes, the world can respond rapidly, as a cohesive unit, to a potentially devastating threat. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer