amen
I ADMIT I was wary when I was approached, late in 2008, about working on a movie with the director Steven Soderbergh about a flulike pandemic. It seemed that every few years a filmmaker imagined a world in which a virus transformed humans into flesh-eating zombies, or scientists discovered and delivered the cure for a lethal infectious disease in an impossibly short period of time.
Moviegoers might find fantasies like these entertaining, but for a microbe hunter like me, who spends his days trying to identify the viruses that cause dangerous diseases, the truth about the potential of global outbreaks is gripping enough.
Then I discovered that Mr. Soderbergh and the screenwriter on the project, Scott Z. Burns, agreed with me. They were determined to make a movie — “Contagion,” which opened this weekend — that didn’t distort reality but did convey the risks that we all face from emerging infectious diseases.
Those risks are very real — and are increasing drastically.
Pioneering epidemiologist Ian Lipkin (PopTech 2008) writes a New York Times op-ed on consulting on the movie ‘Contagion,’ which was released this past weekend.
it has happened.. it can happen.
