Fever Pitch

The fastest way for a government official to become a victim of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is to do too little to prevent the killer disease from spreading. Perhaps that's why Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian is portraying himself as a front-line crusader in the fight against the SARS virus. Chen told local reporters that he received a phone call on April 22 from a friend, a local health-care official, warning him that Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital was covering up an outbreak of SARS among its patients and medical staff. Chen dispatched investigators from Taiwan's Center for Disease Control (CDC); within...