Article 2 - REVIEW OF "China Syndrome" January 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    Many epidemiologists have prognosticated that the world is overdue for a pandemic. But with the SARS scare of 2003, did humanity dodge a bullet that was aimed straight for them? "China Syndrome" is a book by journalist Karl Taro Greenfield that explores the minefield of Ground Zero for SARS, as the virus spreads through humanity like the silent killer it was in the year of 2003.

    In the tradition of "Hot Zone" and "Virus Hunter", Greenfield provides a fast paced yet detailed narrative of how the SARS virus originates in a remote Chinese province called Guangdong, and reaches its tentacles throughout the world. The book carries the voice of a science thriller novel, but yet, knowing that in the end, the virus abates, its narrative tension is created in investigating the means and the suspense of who carries the virus forth, and where the virus travels. From interviews and personal observation, Greenfield documents the virus' journey and the havoc it wreaks. An editor and reporter for Time Asia stationed in Hong Kong, just miles away from the epicenter, Greenfield is right in the thick of things as the virus inexorably spreads around him. He manages to convey his own experience while remaining detached enough to report what goes on around him.

    Comprehensive and varied in its scope, "China Syndrome" documents not only the medical narrative of SARS but also the society the virus that it finds its home. Greenfield uses enormous breadth of focus by describing the economic factors that have led individuals to China's Special Economic Zones, of which Guangdong is part of. He discusses the politics of medicine, and how policies of both China and Hong Kong contributed to the quelling of the virus, as well as what may have led to its spreading. He describes the nature of the Chinese government's code of silence and denial, and how that affected the outbreak and the management of the disease. His intersection of the political, economic, and cultural nuances of Chinese society with how it comes full force to the front in a medical emergency is deft and fluent, a current that explains itself without having to force the different focus of interests the disciplines represent.

    Most vividly, Greenfield depicts how fear entrenches its tentacles more deeply into the society than the virus ever gets. Much of the narrative describes the lengths people go to protect themselves in the atmosphere of disease, and how this fear affects the cohesion of society. These observations show how the factor of mass society will affect the configuration of a pandemic, people being too impossible to truly predict with current mathematical formulae.

    As the virus makes its way to its mysterious dead end, Greenfield reflects on its affect on his life and those in the wider world. Was SARS a warning to humanity, a harbinger of things to come? Will SARS make a comeback, and be stronger next time? Or will it be surpassed by the ever-present bird flu, if it morphed into a superflu? Greenfield doesn't answer these questions, for the obvious reason that he can't. But in reflecting on the near-miss of the pandemic that barely wasn't, one can't help but ask these questions. The searing edge of suspense in "China Syndrome" will make these questions seem ever more real.