Hooked on ID with Amesh A. Adalja, MD
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I knew from the earliest stages that if I pursued medicine as a career, infectious disease was the only choice for me. As a child, my favorite storybook was The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur, which recounts the discovery of the rabies vaccine. The idea that there were these mysterious entities called viruses and the human immune system had ways to combat them was completely captivating. As I grew older and learned about infectious diseases such as HIV, this fascination only increased. By the time I decided to go to medical school, I had already consumed scores of books on Ebola, Lassa fever, antimicrobial resistance and anything else I could get my hands on. In residency, I was mocked for carrying C.J. Peters’ Virus Hunter in my lab coat pocket, whereas the pockets of my fellow residents were teaming with reference books that allowed them to function on the wards.
That this class of diseases can occur after certain exposures and certain activities and have the potential to spark global pandemics that destabilize civilization sets ID apart from every other field of medicine. Diagnosing just one case of certain infections can be an immediate worldwide emergency. Above all, it is the detective work, the probing questions, the interactions with everything from politics to national security, and — most of all — the endless puzzles that hooked me on ID from the very start and continue to hook me every day.
Amesh A. Adalja, MD
Senior scholar
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security