ITHACA, N.Y. -- The public-health infrastructure -- both in the United States and worldwide -- is ill-prepared to deal with emerging viruses and microbes, journalist Laurie Garrett will assert when she delivers the 2003 Iscol lecture Thursday, April 24, at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, Cornell University. Free and open to the public, the lecture is titled "Coming Plagues: Signaling an Environment in Distress."

Garrett, a 1996 Pulitzer Prize winner for her hands-on coverage of Zaire's Ebola epidemic, is a medical and science writer at Newsday. The author of two books about disease epidemics and the state of global health care, Garrett is expected to tell her audience that many scientists today know what policy-makers and governmental leaders fail to acknowledge: that emerging and re-emerging diseases -- far from being eradicated -- pose an unprecedented threat to human health. She contends that dramatic changes in attitudes, as well as resource allocation, will be needed to construct a public-health infrastructure capable of coping with the myriad challenges of globalization.

Two other public events are scheduled as part of Garrett's visit to the Cornell campus:

o An open question-and-answer session, in which Garrett will discuss her career as a journalist, is planned for Friday, April 25, at 8:30 a.m. in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall.

o A book signing with Garrett is set for April 25 from 10:15 to 11:30 a.m. in the Cornell Store's upper level. The Coming Plague: Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (Hyperion, 2000) and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994), as well as other recent books in which Garrett has been a contributor, will be available.

Organized by the Cornell Center for the Environment, the annual Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture brings to campus prominent scholars, newsmakers, scientists and leaders to address environmental issues of paramount importance. Previous lecturers have included Nobel laureate F. Sherwood Rowland, biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell and Cornell researchers Jerry Meinwald and Thomas Eisner, who is widely regarded as the "father" of chemical ecology.

Other honors to Garrett, who switched to journalism from a career in bacteriology and immunology, include the George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award, the George Polk Award in Journalism and the Bob Considine Award of the Overseas Press Club. She is the holder of two honorary doctorates.

She worked in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa as a reporter for Pacifica Radio, Pacific News Service, the British Broadcasting Corp., Reuters and Associated Press before joining the Newsday staff in 1988. She is a member and past president of the National Association of Science Writers and makes frequent appearances on national television programs.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following site provides additional information on this news release

o Cornell Center for the Environment: http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/