March 19, 1996 Contact: Robert Irion (408) 459-2495; irion@ua.ucsc.edu

JOURNALIST LAURIE GARRETT TO GIVE PUBLIC LECTURE AT UC SANTA CRUZ ON HER ACCLAIMED BOOK, THE COMING PLAGUE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Plague and pestilence sound like dirty words out of history books, harking to times of poor societal hygiene and backward medical practices. Today's hospitals and miracle pills seem to offer quick cures, making it easy to forget that bacteria, viruses, and other microbes still live among us. Such complacency is dangerous, says science journalist and UC Santa Cruz alumna Laurie Garrett. Indeed, Garrett argues, we face grave danger from a whole new host of infectious diseases--and the modern medical establishment is ill-prepared to deal with them.

That's the central tenet of The Coming Plague, Garrett's comprehensive and critically heralded 1994 book. A local audience will have the chance to hear Garrett's forceful views on the subject when she gives a public lecture at UCSC on Friday, April 12. The lecture, titled "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance" (echoing the full title of her book), will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Classroom Unit 2 on the UCSC campus. Admission is free. Parking will be available at the Bay Tree Bookstore; signs will direct visitors into nearby parking lots and to the lecture hall.

Garrett's talk will cap her two-week visit to her alma mater as a Regents' Lecturer, a position reserved for distinguished visitors and guest instructors. From April 1 through April 12, Garrett will speak in classes offered by the Biology Department, the Science Communication Program, and the Writing Program, and she will meet with educators in UCSC's AIDS/HIV Prevention Program. All four of those units are sponsoring Garrett's visit, as is Merrill College, from which Garrett earned her B.A. in biology in 1975.

A medical writer for Newsday, Garrett drew upon more than a decade of worldwide reporting to write The Coming Plague. The book's 750 pages chronicle a legion of infectious diseases, from the pedestrian that many assume we have conquered to the exotic that threaten to explode from local scourges into global outbreaks. Smallpox rests in peace as one disease that medicine has eradicated, but others still flare up or have made unwelcome returns: tuberculosis, malaria, even measles and chicken pox. Innumerable viruses, from AIDS to gruesome hemorrhagic fevers, shift and mutate to evade our attempted cures.

International travel has opened the door to the rapid spread of diseases that, in past eras, might have burned out quickly. So, too, does medicine aid and abet the problem, Garrett says; overuse of antibiotics, for instance, encourages disease-resistant strains of bacteria to thrive. She points an angry finger at the policies of humans themselves--"ill-planned development schemes, misguided medicine, errant public health, and shortsighted political action/inaction"--that have only helped microbes to strengthen their footholds. But those footholds, she notes, never were weak.

"Humanity's ancient enemies are, after all, microbes," Garrett writes. "They didn't go away just because science invented drugs, antibiotics, and vaccines. They didn't disappear from the planet when Americans and Europeans cleaned up their towns and cities in the postindustrial era. And they certainly won't become extinct simply because human beings choose to ignore their existence."

Among the solutions Garrett proposes in The Coming Plague are an international effort to monitor the outbreak and incidence of communicable disease; data banks for identifying viruses; the training of additional scientists for fieldwork at the site of an outbreak; mobile infectious-disease hospitals that can be airlifted to the scene of an epidemic at a moment's notice; an international campaign to provide sterile syringes; and a commitment to provide better general education to all segments of the world's population.

Garrett studied immunology in graduate school at UC Berkeley before embarking upon her career in journalism. She worked for eight years as a science correspondent for National Public Radio, then joined the staff of Newsday in 1988. She is president of the National Association of Science Writers and has won many awards for her reporting on AIDS, breast cancer, and other issues in public health. In February she received the 1995 Alumni Achievement Award from UCSC's Alumni Association, the highest honor bestowed upon UCSC graduates.

Editor's note: Laurie Garrett will be available to speak with reporters during her visit. To arrange an interview or to obtain a review copy of her book, call Robert Irion at (408) 459-2495.

Francine Tyler of UCSC's Public Information Office contributed to this news release.

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