The Red Plague Cheryl Miller

REVIEWS & RECONSIDERATIONS

n Guangdong, a southern prov- infect more than 8,000 people and ince of China, there are thou- kill over 800. Based in Hong Kong, Isands of wild animal markets, Greenfeld was the editor of Time selling every possible kind of crea- Asia when the outbreak began. He ture: snakes, raccoon dogs, civet cats, was an experienced reporter, having monkeys, otters. These markets cater covered the Asian “miracle” econo- to the southern Chinese love of yewei, mies of the early 1990s in two pre- or “wild-flavor” cui- vious books. With sine, which features The China Syndrome: The True The China Syndrome, Story of the 21st Century’s First such exotic fare as Great Epidemic Greenfeld provides camel hump, dried By Karl Taro Greenfeld both a fascinating tiger penises, and HarperCollins ~ 2006 ~ 442 pp. glimpse of life in bear bladders. For $25.95 (cloth) $14.95 (paper) modern-day China many, yewei was and an account of the perfect symbol of China’s new- a pandemic averted that has all the found wealth; the Chinese would even suspense of a good thriller. call the period of economic boom in the South “the Era of Wild Flavor.” n Guangdong, Greenfeld writes, Businessmen would gather at one Ithe virus had found the perfect of the province’s many Wild Flavor home. Known to scientists as “the restaurants to nosh on various deli- birthplace of influenza,” Guangdong cacies, all reputed to make their con- had been the starting point for two sumer fan rong or “prosperous.” of the past three flu pandemics. With But, as Karl Taro Greenfeld writes the rapid industrialization of the in his history of the SARS outbreak, province, immigrants from all over yewei was also a symbol of China’s vul- China were flooding the cities look- nerability—its markets and restau- ing for work. They crowded tene- rants becoming the breeding ground ments, living three or four people to for a deadly new virus that would a room. Life in these places was so

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER transient that roommates sometimes enous viruses that it shed by the didn’t even know each others’ names, millions, in feces, blood, sweat, saliva which would later make it more dif- and tears,” Greenfeld writes. These ficult for health workers to identify unsanitary conditions provided what and quarantine the infected. infectious-disease reporter Laurie The public health infrastructure Garrett would call “a microbial swap- was badly strained. In the city of meet.” And at one of these markets, Shenzhen, many residents did not Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome even have running water. Newly (SARS), a rapidly mutating corona- privatized hospitals were starved for virus found in civet cats, would make funds, leading many to cut back on the leap from animal to man. preventative care and supplies. At the height of the SARS crisis, some he virus could not have found medical staff still needed to pay for Ta country less prepared. their own gloves and masks to pro- Initial cases were simply ignored. tect against the virus. Respiratory illnesses are common Add to all this the unusual oppor- in China, and few patients even con- tunity offered by the wild animal sulted a doctor. A trip to the hospital markets for a virus to attack. These could cost a month’s wages, leaving markets were left practically unregu- the infected to rely instead on tra- lated; so were the restaurants that ditional healers and indiscriminate served up various yewei delicacies. quantities of antibiotics, which are When asked, the director of the Wild sold over the counter in China. Local Animal Protection division at the hospital directors and provincial Guangdong Forestry Bureau admit- authorities, afraid to lose face with ted that the department did not keep their superiors, decided to wait and track of the licenses it provided to the see if the outbreak subsided before Wild Flavor restaurants. The direc- notifying the Chinese government. tor then provided Greenfeld with When it became clear that the a list of animals that were forbid- “atypical pneumonia” tearing through den from being sold at the markets. hospital wards and cities was not just Every animal on the list—except for another seasonal malady, frightened panda—was available. health workers began to petition the Walking through the markets, government for help. It responded Greenfeld was overwhelmed by a by issuing what it called “the Three powerful musky odor—the combined No’s”: doctors should not share smells of the flesh and waste of information about the virus with the hundreds of caged animals. “Each media; they should not contact other of these creatures, destined for the medical workers; and they should not banquet table, had a host of indig- alert international bodies, such as the

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World Health Organization (WHO). the staff were infected with SARS. The Three No’s were a recipe for When the Chinese authorities finally disaster, and Greenfeld’s title, The allowed a WHO team into the coun- China Syndrome, is as apt a moniker try, government operatives stashed for the Chinese government as it is for patients in hotels and ambulances to SARS. The Chinese regime’s secre- hide them from the foreign doctors. tiveness and paranoia was as deadly as the disease itself, as the government s impressive as Greenfeld’s sought at every turn to cover up any Areporting is on the clumsy news of the epidemic killing hundreds and destructive machinations of the of its own citizens. The authorities Chinese Communist government, he feared that news about SARS would fails to apply the same level of scru- create public unrest, possibly inter- tiny to the other players in the SARS fering with the March 2003 transfer drama. It is disappointing to find that of power within the government and a reporter so gimlet-eyed can also be with the celebration of the Chinese so credulous of the conventional wis- New Year. “Look at what happened dom. This misplaced credulity mani- in Hong Kong, where everybody’s fests itself in Greenfeld’s breathless scared and wearing a mask,” a senior admiration for the United Nations aide to Shanghai’s vice mayor told a and his accompanying vehement dis- Time Asia reporter. “We don’t want approval of the Bush administration. everyone to get panicked like that for That he would feel so is not altogeth- no reason and destroy our economy.” er surprising. Greenfeld is completely To prevent any possibility of “insta- candid—though a bit disconcerting- bility,” the authorities labeled all infor- ly—about how he resented the Iraq mation about the disease “top secret.” War for overshadowing his big story. The state-controlled media were And many WHO officials served as forbidden from reporting on SARS sources for his book, making it more beyond repeating the government’s likely that the U.N. agency would be denials about its presence. Although cast in the best possible light. China’s leaders knew that SARS was Yet Greenfeld’s biases are often highly contagious, they prohibited the contradicted by his own reporting. release of memos to hospitals on how In one chapter lambasting the Bush to protect medical workers against administration for questioning the the disease. That decree made hospi- United Nations, he describes the tals killing zones, as doctors unwit- WHO as “indispensable,” a “sterling tingly spread the virus by intubating example” of the U.N.’s importance the infected and handling patients to global order. As for those nasty without proper protection. At just “Republican politicians,” their criti- one hospital, over fifty members of cisms of the U.N. are merely excuses

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER meant to hide their real objective investigating for months—she was to rid the world of “an unwanted initially rebuffed. The WHO repre- obstacle to Pax Americana.” sentative was concerned—not that In the same chapter, however, the spread of SARS in China might Greenfeld explains that the WHO unleash a global pandemic, but that had been downgrading its infectious Jakes’s story would “unnecessarily disease-fighting abilities since the offend the Chinese government.” 1970s, shifting its resources instead to Moreover, Greenfeld does not combating behavioral problems such mention the most troubling example as smoking and obesity. The WHO’s of the WHO’s timidity in work- Global Outbreak Alert and Response ing with the Chinese: Taiwan. This Network, meant to identify emerging omission is troubling, particularly in outbreaks and coordinate government light of Greenfeld’s glowing account and agency responses, consisted of a of the WHO’s work in Vietnam. In mere three-person staff, which basi- just six weeks, he reports, thanks cally just monitored already exist- in large part to the quick thinking ing networks such as ProMED. “In of the Italian parasitologist Carlo most cases,” Greenfeld writes, “the Urbani, the WHO was able to con- WHO would find out about an out- tain the virus in Vietnam. Its work in break only after it had already run its Taiwan, though—as Steven Menashi course.” And this is the world-class has described in these pages (“The organization that is going to protect Politics of the WHO,” Fall 2003)— us from a global pandemic? was not nearly so laudable. While Even when it became clear that the WHO was assisting Vietnam, China had lied about the extent of Taiwan was forced to wait seven the epidemic, the WHO put off hold- weeks for the Chinese government ing a press conference about the dis- to permit a WHO team to enter the ease, hoping instead that the Chinese island. In the meantime, the WHO government would come clean on its refused Taiwan’s request to listen own. The U.N. agency also put off in on its weekly video conferences placing a travel advisory on China or to join its information-sharing and Hong Kong, worried that this network on SARS. The WHO would would cause a diplomatic row. At one not even acknowledge the outbreak point, it almost seems as if the WHO of SARS in Taiwan, believing instead was complicit in Beijing’s cover-up. the Chinese government’s claims that When Susan Jakes, a Times Asia the island was disease-free. reporter, leaked to a WHO official a memo by a Communist Party doctor n the end, as the WHO itself describing the cover-up—proof of Iconcedes, it was mere luck that the conspiracy the WHO had been kept SARS from raging out of con-

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE RED PLAGUE trol. Had SARS become airborne, it at just one hospital, even though the could have killed many thousands. government maintained that there Moreover, just as the Chinese gov- were only twelve cases in all of ernment finally began to respond to Beijing. Jiang decided that he must the crisis, the virus mysteriously dis- inform the public, knowing all too appeared, perhaps because of the sea- well the potential cost of his heroic sonability of coronaviruses. As one actions. Labeled a “class criminal” former WHO official put it, “SARS is during the Cultural Revolution, he the pandemic that did not occur.” had been sentenced to hard labor at The world was lucky in another a prison camp for political detainees. way, too. It was a few extraordi- His wife urged him to keep quiet, but nary people who helped expose the Jiang refused: “This is bigger than cover-up, forcing the Chinese author- me, or you, or China,” he would tell ities to cooperate with the WHO. her. “I have to tell the world. This Greenfeld singles out his Time Asia could be a disaster for all of man- staff, in particular Susan Jakes, and kind.” two Chinese doctors, Guan Yi and The disaster averted, Greenfeld Jiang Yanyong. asks whether China has learned A virologist at the University of from its mistakes. The evidence Hong Kong, Guan worked day and is not encouraging. Although the night to identify the new mystery mayor of Beijing and a few min- disease. Twice, he smuggled samples isters of health lost their jobs, the from infected patients out of China— Chinese Communist Party continues an act for which he would have been to suppress information about any- tried for treason had he been caught. thing—no matter the consequenc- And it was Guan’s work in identify- es—that might cause “instability.” ing the virus’s host which convinced Indeed, some government officials, the authorities to close down the Greenfield writes, “believed that the wild animal markets, helping to pre- real lesson of SARS was to engage vent another outbreak. in more effective cover-ups.” When Jiang was the aforementioned SARS reappeared in 2004, Chinese Communist Party member and mili- authorities tried just that, arrest- tary doctor who gave Susan Jakes ing any journalist who reported on the memo she offered to the WHO. the new infections. That same year, When a fellow doctor told him about Guan Yi was charged with reveal- the terrible illness that was killing his ing “state secrets” after he spoke out staff, Jiang began calling hospitals, about the recent outbreak of avian trying to get a count on the number flu in Guangdong. His laboratory of people infected. The news was was closed down. The wild animal horrifying: there were sixty patients markets, which Guan exposed as the

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER breeding ground of the virus, have in publicizing the SARS outbreak. So been reopened. the Communist Party forced him to And the other SARS hero, Jiang write a letter stating that he didn’t Yanyong? In 2004, he wrote a letter deserve the prize. Though eventu- denouncing the Tiananmen Square ally released from house arrest, he massacre. Jiang felt guilty, he said, for reportedly remains under govern- not speaking out at the time, when he ment surveillance. All this prompts treated the Tiananmen victims. The Greenfeld to raise the question: government, alas, felt no such guilt. Given the personal and professional Chinese authorities put Jiang under risks of speaking the truth in illiberal house arrest and forced him into a regimes, “Who will be so brave next “reeducation” program. That same time?” year Jiang was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award—sometimes called Cheryl Miller is a writer living in the “Asian Nobel Prize”—for his work Washington, D.C.

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