'I'd put my money on the bugs.' Exploring Diseases with Richard Preston.

Steve Scher
06/10/2008 at 9:00 a.m.

"In the battle between the doctors and the bugs… I'd put my money on the bugs," says a doctor in Richard Preston's latest book Panic in Level 4. It's an expose of mysterious and frightening illnesses, and the doctors and researchers who face them head on. Where did the Ebola virus come from? How does a DNA mutation cause self–cannibalism? What is the Ebola of the trees?

Guests:
Richard Preston is the bestselling author of The Hot Zone, The Demon in the Freezer, The Wild Trees and the novel The Cobra Event. Preston has been writing for the New Yorker since 1985 and is the only nondoctor to have received the Centers for Disease Control's Champion of Prevention Award. His newest book is Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science.