Pandoras Gamble, Alison Young
Pandoras Gamble, Alison Young
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Pandora's Gamble
Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk

Author: Alison Young

Narrator: Pamela Almand

Unabridged: 10 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Center Street

Published: 04/25/2023


Synopsis

This fearless, deeply reported book about laboratory accidents asks the haunting question some elite scientists don’t want the public to entertain: Did the COVID-19 pandemic start with a lab leak in Wuhan, China?
 
This is an obvious question. Yet there’s been an extraordinary effort by government officials in China, as well as leading scientific experts in the United States and around the world, to shut down any investigation or discussion of the lab leak theory. In private, however, some of the world’s elite scientists have seen a lab accident as a very real and horrifying possibility. They know what the public doesn’t. Lab accidents happen with shocking frequency. Even at the world’s best-run labs.

That’s among the revelations from Alison Young, the award-winning investigative reporter who has spent nearly 15 years uncovering shocking safety breaches at prestigious U.S. laboratories for USA Today and other respected news outlets.
 
In Pandora’s Gamble, Young goes deep into the troubling history -- and enormous risks -- of leaks and accidents at scientific labs. She takes readers on a riveting journey around the world to some of the worst lab mishaps in history, including the largely unknown stories of the lab workers at the U.S. Army’s Camp Detrick who suffered devastating infections at alarming rates during World War II. And her groundbreaking reporting exposes for the first time disturbing new details about recent accidents at prestigious laboratories – and the alarming gaps in government oversight that put all of us at risk. 
 
Sourced through meticulous reporting and exclusive interviews with key players including Dr. Anthony Fauci, former CDC Director Tom Frieden and others, Young’s examination reveals that the only thing rare about lab accidents is the public rarely finds out about them. Because when accidents happen, powerful people and institutions often work hard to keep the information secret.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jay on May 23, 2023

How should we treat a problem whose likelihood is remote, yet whose occurance could be utterly catastrophic? Young's story is compelling and sobering. COVID 19's emergence has a long and troubling history.......more

Goodreads review by Liz on September 27, 2023

Alison Young hits it out of the park with her tale of the trials and tribulations of microbiology, experimental labs, and the regulations - enforced and NOT enforced. From the early history of microbiological experimentation and its... errors, both in execution and judgment, to the recent pandemic t......more

Goodreads review by Ben on March 13, 2024

Timely Read In full honesty - I picked up this book in human interest, as there was recent news that shed some light into the lab leaks of COVID-19 and coincidently, around the same time, I heard about this author speaking about it (on The Jordan Harbinger Show Podcast). I found this book incredibly i......more

Goodreads review by Pete on March 07, 2024

Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, And A World At Risk (2024) by Alison Young is a very interesting book that examines biological lab leaks in the United States. Young is a journalist who covered the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and started to cover the numerous lab leaks that occurred t......more

Goodreads review by Nikki on December 10, 2023

Well, well, well.. that was an interesting and slightly worrisome read and boy was I dragged in - this is a subject that I am hugely interested in and I was very happy and invested. I lost count of the amount of times I gasped out loud, said omg and wtf, while reading this. I rang my mum multiple tim......more


Quotes

"Before the rest of us were paying attention, Alison Young was covering the dangers of safety lapses at the world’s top laboratories. She opens her meticulously reported, deeply alarming book by exploring the 'horrifying possibility' that Covid-19 was the result of just such a breach in China. Essential reading for policymakers – and the public."—Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief, USA TODAY, and author of Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power