Adventures of a Disease Detective

Mark White was the bubonic plague epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when his wife left him and took the kids to the East Coast. He moved to New York City to be near them and got a job as the hospital epidemiologist at Booth Memorial Medical Center (now the New York-Presbyterian Queens Hospital). Soon he and his nurse epidemiologists faced cases of Acquired Immune Syndrome and a hospital-wide anti-freeze poisoning in the water supply that affected the largest hemodialysis unit in New York City. When the City Health Office ordered the hospital closed, he confronted them and forced them to rescind the order. During a head lice epidemic in the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit, he met the woman he would marry, a Filipina named Budsy Mendoza. When the People Power Revolution in the Philippines overthrew the dictator Marcos, Budsy and Mark got a job helping the Philippine government to build an epidemiology response unit. They soon investigated a national scare that there was embalming fluid in fish and many red tide epidemics. They endured six military coup attempts. They helped deal with several earthquakes and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. The largest eruption in our lifetimes. I sent so much ash into the atmosphere that it lowered the global temperature by 2 degrees C for two years. After controlling an Ebola epidemic, among monkey handlers, an American competitor persuaded the US State Department to make Mark persona no grata and force him to leave the Philippines. When Budsy got breast cancer, they returned to the US for treatment and then moved to start an epidemiology training program in Uganda shortly after Idi Amin was overthrown. They worked with Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, to control sleeping sickness. Budsy's cancer recurred, and they returned to the US for more treatment. Eventually, she died as he stood by her bedside. Steve Thacker of CDC hired Mark to be Director of the division of International Health. Mark started and organized programs in nearly thirty counties, including China, Japan, India, Central Asia, and Central American regional programs. Together they accounted for more than half the world's population. Mark felt Field Epidemiology Training Programs should have an organization to exchange ideas and advocate for their interests. Charles Mérieux funded a meeting in Lyon, France, where the organization was organized. In 2000, Mark and his old friend, Shelly Ahmann, were wed. She had been Chief of Surgery at the Northern Navajo Medical Center. They adopted two biological sisters from Ethiopia whose mother died of AIDS. The girls are now in college. Counting Mark's two sons from his first marriage, they have four children. Mark retired and wrote this memoir.