Notes: p. [587]-740. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Filth and decay: Pneumonic plague hits India and the world ill responds -- Landa-Landa: an Ebola virus epidemic in Zaire proves public health is imperiled by corruption -- Bourgeois physiology: the collapse of all semblances of public health in the former Soviet Socialist Republics -- Preferring anarchy and class disparity: the American public health infrastructure in an age of antigovernmentalism -- Biowar : threatening biological terrorism and public health -- Epilogue: the changing face of public health and future global prophylaxis. "Garrett exposes the underbelly of the world's globalization: If India's economy is prospering, for example, how can there coexist with this new affluence an outbreak of pneumonic plague, a disease long thought to have been relegated to the history books? In Russia, alcoholism, drug addiction, TB, and the effects of such catastrophes as Chernobyl have shortened life expectancy for the average man by a full decade since 1991. In the United States, we face new "superstrains" of diseases we thought had been wiped out long ago. In addition, global travel has made it nearly impossible to keep what were once considered "third world diseases" out of our country. Has our public health system let us down, and if so, how serious is the danger to our collective health?"--BOOK JACKET.