Adventures of a Female Medical Detective: In Pursuit of Smallpox and AIDS

Guinan, former chief scientific adviser to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has assembled a fascinating collection of her experiences. The only female internal medicine physician in her graduating class from Johns Hopkins, the author was also the only woman member of CDC's elite Epidemiology Intelligence Service, a two-year intensive program designed to train physicians to identify patterns and respond to major public health crises. In the early 1970s, she joined the World Health Organization's Operation Smallpox Zero eradication program in India and soon after the nation was smallpox-free. Guinan also details her research of the herpes virus, which led to her eventual treatment of some of the first AIDS patients in the early 1980s. Overcoming physical barriers across border nations, stigmas against STDs, and her own battles with those in the medical field, the author proves herself a pioneer of public health investigation and specialization of infectious disease as a whole.