ON 2 October 2001, a doctor at a Florida hospital examined a patient admitted to intensive care with mystifying symptoms. Ordering a spinal tap, the doctor checked for bacterial infection, and found what appeared to be the lethal pathogen Bacillus anthracis – anthrax. Within two days of alerting the public health department, the diagnosis was confirmed, and news had passed up the ranks to Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush. “Is the disease contagious?” he asked.
Technically it wasn’t, since the bacterium must spore before infecting someone. But psychologically, in the paranoid atmosphere that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anthrax was the ultimate contagion. In her riveting reconstruction of…
