The Cobra Event

Blurb

The Cobra Event is a 1998 thriller novel by Richard Preston describing an attempted bioterrorism attack on the United States. The perpetrator of the attack has genetically engineered a virus, called "Cobra", that fuses the incurable and highly contagious common cold with one of the world's most virulent diseases, smallpox. The disease that results from the virus, called brain-pox in the novel, has symptoms that mimic those of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, the common cold, and Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus. The book is divided between descriptions of the virus, and the government's attempt to stop the imminent threat posed by it.