Summary

Influence/Speechlessness (This chapter begins with the phrase “Influence / Speechlessness” repeated over and over for five pages, with each letter symbolizing the 21,000 animals the average American eats in a lifetime.)

Lam Hoi-ka – 276 people live in the tiny Inuit village of Brevig Mission on the Bering Strait. Johan Hultin, a Swedish academic, excavates a mass grave of 1918 flu pandemic victims to study them, while only months before, Hong Kong reported that the H5N1-type chicken virus had been contracted by humans. A six-year-old child named Lam Hoi-ka is the first to die of the disease. It is worried the virus might mutate into something deadlier.

Influenza – The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, so named because Spain’s media devoted so much coverage to it, has been the world’s deadliest flu outbreak. Between 50 and 100 million are estimated to have died, with...