(CHICAGO) - Really, it took great humility for the United States Secretary of State to call her country "the world=92s indispensable nation." After all, the book Dow 36,000 is competing with Dow 100,000 for bestseller status. (The U.S. stock market index--having soared some 800% in a decade--is now around 11,000.)

And dictators quail before the awesome U.S. military, now free-at-last to carpet-bomb anywhere human rights need defending.

"Indispensable" is putting it mildly.

And if querelous Red warnings about a speculative bubble near to bursting and a trajectory toward world Depression and war are off the mark --as they of course must be-- what could possibly go wrong here?

Nothing, of course -- well, maybe one thing.

Suppose one of several new diseases killed tens of millions just in the U.S. -- death by liquifying pathogens of extraordinary virulence, unstoppable pathogens with neither cure nor treatment. Impossible?

Actually, the well-informed --especially readers of The Hot Zone by Richard Preston (who, as we=92ll see, is now issuing a new warning) -- know this is a genuine, serious concern of leading epidemiologists. It is not a tabloid fantasy.

The well-informed know that we're talking about Level 4 biohazard "hot" viruses like Ebola, Lassa and Marburg -- viruses with up to 90% lethality rates, some strains of which are capable of airborne transmission (a sneeze in a classroom, for instance).

Preston's readers know that for 18 days in 1989 the U.S. military seized control of a monkey warehouse near Washington D.C. where such a strain of Ebola emerged ... and "nuked" it.

They know that these viruses (including HIV, which causes AIDS) originate from the tropical rain forest, and that their emergence stems largely from human destruction of that environment.

They may also know --especially if they read Laurie Garrett's superior and encyclopedic book The Coming Plague-- that global inequality drives that destruction ... and fuels the spread of disease in innumerable ways, from unsanitary drinking water to the complete absence of medical care.

They may even know that the voracious draining of the Third World by banks in the imperialist world ("the Third World debt" in the popular press parlance) is the central mechanism of global inequality -- and hence of Ebola, HIV and the like.

They might even know --especially if they read the article "Extermination: Neither Fire nor Water Next Time" by one S. Eckardt-- that nuclear weapons testing and manufacturing may play a key role in the mutations that enable these viruses to suddenly prey on our species (see the article at ).

And those who don't know? They should make it their business to find out. The normal operation of the system run by the world's indispensable nation could--at its moment of triumph--have the side-effect of a world virtually wiped of human life.

* * * Now Richard Preston --who deserves credit as the first journalist to bring this possibilty to wide public attention-- warns of another disease that could potentially exterminate vast numbers of humanity. And it's a disease whose elimination was celebrated just twenty years ago.

That not a single case of smallpox has occurred since 1977 is certainly one of humanity's greatest accomplishments. After all, smallpox killed "at least three hundred million people in the twentieth century" alone, according to Preston's article in the 12 July issue of The New Yorker magazine.

But the vaccine responsible for the virus's elimination (there are no reservoirs besides humans for it to survive in) "begins to wear off in many people after ten years." And -- guess what -- there's no stock of smallpox vaccine available any more . . . and it would take years to produce even if they started immediately.

No problem, of course, if smallpox no longer exists. But . . . .

But, says Preston, the former Soviet Union produced some twenty tons of smallpox for use in biological weapons -- and he hints (without solid evidence, mind you) that not all of it has been destroyed.

Furthermore, he says, "the United States government keeps a list of nations and groups it suspects either have clandestine stocks of smallpox or seem to be trying to buy or steal the virus."

He goes on: "The list is classified, but it is said to include Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, and Serbia. The list may also include the terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden and, possibly, the Aum Shinrikyo sect of Japan [which released nerve gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995]."

Well thank god Washington's been so busy bombing or starving or sabotaging all those places (except for their Israeli client state of course). In fact, shouldn't they be bombing all those places NOW?

Yes, Preston has unfortunately followed to their logical conclusion the flawed politics already visible in The Hot Zone (wherein white man faces peril from darkest Africa): only the U.S. government stands between us and forces that would wipe out the human race. Terrorist madmen threaten us all!! --thank god Washington kept all those nuclear missiles.

* * *

Is there a chance of a staggeringly-lethal global pandemic?

Even beyond HIV, the answer is "yes." But, Preston's scary tale aside, the agent almost certainly wouldn't be smallpox. After all, even if there's an organized force that actually obtain the smallpox virus -- and insanely evil enough to use it as a weapon -- with no stockpile of smallpox vaccine, no country or organization can use the virus without wiping themselves out, too.

No stockpile of vaccine -- no usable weapon.

Yes, the world looks pretty safe from smallpox -- until somebody has a vaccine stockpile, nobody can use the virus to threaten humanity with extermination.

And just in case --just to keep precious Americans safe-- Preston reports that "the [U.S.] National Security Council ... has sent word through the federal government that getting national stockpiles of smallpox vaccine is a top priority." Thank god, eh?

But wait -- what was that again?

Repeat: a top priority of the United States government is --yes-- building stockpiles of smallpox vaccine.

Which would mean . . . .

Which would mean "indispensable" would be putting it very mildly indeed.

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