Summary

Chapter 2, “Annals of Public Health,” begins with Osterholm’s childhood in rural Iowa. His alcoholic father, whom he eventually kicked out of the house, was a newspaper photographer whose boss introduced Osterholm to “Annals of Medicine,” a long-running New Yorker column about cutting-edge scientific and medical discoveries, which introduced a young Osterholm to the concept of epidemiology. Osterholm describes epidemiology as the study of disease and disease prevention in populations and compares it to detective work.

Osterholm introduces the reader to one of his personal mentors, former CDC director Bill Foege, who now works for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foege believes that public health’s “philosophical base is social justice, and its scientific base is epidemiology,” (23) a viewpoint that has had a large impact on Osterholm. Foege was a major player in small pox eradication and helped implement the ring strategy...