Pandemics and Politics

For more than fifty years, Max Essex has stood at the front lines of the world’s epidemics. As a pioneering AIDS researcher and distinguished microbiologist, Essex was among the first to link retroviruses to AIDS, to prove that HIV could be spread through bodily fluids, and to identify the protein that became the global standard for HIV screening. His work helped shape how the world understands and prevents viral disease, especially across the African continent. In Pandemics and Politics, Essex blends personal memoir with scientific history. He revisits six viruses that defined his career and transformed global health: Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE), feline leukemia (FeLV), human T-cell leukemia (HTLV), hepatitis B (HBV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Three cause cancer, three drive immunosuppression, and two – HIV and COVID – reshaped societies profoundly as they claimed lives. Essex reflects upon the monumental achievements of human medicine alongside the rising challenges of scientific denialism and misinformation, global inequity and prejudice, harmful health policies and more through the lens of the viruses that impact us most. Pandemics and Politics: A Scientist’s Memoir offers a compelling perspective on discovery and controversy, and a look at what these six viruses reveal about the epidemics of the future.