Who is Ron MacKenzie?

Ron MacKenzie had traveled to Bolivia to do nutritional studies when he was asked to look into a recent epidemic in the small city of San Joaquin. MacKenzie was a pediatrician and epidemiologist, so he was qualified to look at the patients, although he was less than qualified to discover the underlying disease. His work did show, however, a severely dangerous disease, and he was soon determined to solve the puzzle. He enlisted the help of many well known virologists and other scientists, and went to work in San Joaquin for months, trying to determine the cause and solution for the disease. After contracting the disease himself and surviving, MacKenzie and the others did discover the spread of the disease was due to a mouse population. By eradicating the mice, the team solved the issue. MacKenzie, going back years later, was shocked to discover that the town remembered him as well as his staff, and had lifted them to hero status as a result of their efforts in helping to save the population from their plague.