Weapon of Mass Destruction  John Barry’s lively, artful, and
very well informed account of the flu epidemic in 1918–1919,
which killed more people than the guns and bayonets of World War
I, ought to attract unusual interest in a year when a lethal
form of “avian flu” has begun to spread from birds to people in
East Asia, and may (or may not) be about to spread as widely
around the world as its predecessor did. If that happens, the
medical profession and public health authorities will be far
better prepared than anyone was in 1918, since they now know how
to immunize human populations against a flu virus, whereas in
1918 no one knew what caused the flu and efforts to find a cure
proved ineffective. Yet despite all the expert knowledge and
skills accumulated since 1918, it is far from sure that our
contemporary medical establishment could deliver enough of the
necessary vaccine in time to forestall another march of illness
and death comparable to what occurred eighty-six years ago.  The
story of the 1918 plague