Customer Reviews

Plague Makers (Investigations)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not sure why Amazon says this isn't yet published; I bought a copy in Europe last fall (98). This is an excellent book which requires no technical pre-knowledge, yet quickly illustrates ways of spotting BW programs and also how newer biotechnologies (gene splicing etc.) make this a critical problem that more rogue players will have access to. It also contains numerous historical examples which were heretofore not well known. This should be on the bookshelf of every policymaker and citizen concerned with e.g. Gulf War syndrome, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

This could have been a 5 star book. The book is packed with very interesting and well documented information. However, the book is riddled with errors. I found so many spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors that the book was actually painful to read. I could not read 2 pages without finding a word missing from a sentence. I can only assume that the book was not edited before publication. Without these problems, this book would have been great!

The Plague Makers appears in a fully updated third edition to offer a subject even more relevant than it was in past editions: the secret world of biological warfare. The anthrax scare of 2001 is only the tip of the iceberg in lab biological weapons making, author Wendy Barnaby reveals: various chapters cover governments around the world using labs to produce deadly combinations of diseases  and the creation of superviruses resistant to treatment.

This book has some great historical info. Unfortunately it is very hard to get through as it is poorly written. Shame on the proofreaders.