Book Report On In The Hot Zone

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Recommended: Symptoms and treatment for Ebola virus disease

In the Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston, published in 1995, is a novel about the origins and the development of viral hemorrhagic fevers, especially ebola and marburg. These diseases are all Biosafety Level 4 agents, which means that they are extremely dangerous because they are highly infectious, have a high case-fatality rate, and there are no known treatments or cures. Marburg Virus and Ebola virus are filoviruses belong to a virus family called Filoviridae and they can cause severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman primates. Five species of Ebola Virus have been identified: Taï Forest, Sudan, Zaire, Reston and Bundibugyo. The book describes the history of these diseases by explaining …show more content…

One character in The Hot Zone, Charles Monet, who works at the Nzoia Sugar Factory in western Kenya, contracted the Ebola-like Marburg virus, "bled out" in the waiting room at a Nairobi hospital. His symptoms started to show on the seventh day after his New Year’s visit to Kitum cave. On January 8, 1980-Monet felt a throbbing pain behind his eyeballs and his headache grew worse. The his eyes also turned a deep red color, his skin drooped, he had a spike in fever, and he vomited. At the same time, he became strangely passive and unresponsive, only knowing basic personal information. His face lost all appearance of life like a zombie, with the eyeballs fixed, the eyelids were slightly droopy, and they turned bright red. The skin of his face turned yellowish, with starlike red speckles. Scientists later went back to Kitum Cave to research the virus because they believed that it was the place that Ebola originated. Eugene "Gene" Johnson is a civilian biohazard expert who ran the Ebola research program at USAMRIID in 1983. In 1988, he organizes an expedition to Kitum Cave with Dr. Peter Tukei, a doctor at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, but they were unable to identify the origin of the virus. At the cave they realize that everything in the cave could have Marburg. They did an assessment on every part of the cave and everything that is …show more content…

In October 1989, there were an unusually high number of their monkeys began to die. The veterinarian there decided to send some samples to Fort Detrick (USAMRIID) to study what the cause was.The testing process was done in a biosafety level 3 area, which meant that they thought it wasn’t as serious and did not have as many precautions. One of the flasks appeared to be contaminated with harmless bacterium, so two scientists exposed themselves to the virus by wafting the flask. They noticed that it had some characteristics that didn’t match up with the Ebola virus. They later concluded that, while the virus is lethal to monkeys and is contagious, they can be transmitted to humans, but it will not have any health effects at

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