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Hot Zone
The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone is a best-selling 1994 non-fiction bio-thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly Ebola viruses and Marburg viruses. This book is based upon an outbreak of the Ebola virus in a monkey house located in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Reston, Virginia. The author weaves together the tales of several previous outbreaks in Africa to describe clearly the potential damage such an outbreak could cause. The first appearance of an Ebola-like virus takes place in Kenya and costs the life of a French emigrant named Charles Monet. His bloody, painful death is re-told in graphic and terrifying terms. Hospital personnel treating Monet become ill as well, demonstrating the extreme danger of exposure to this disease. Through this thriller story, many interesting details take place and the reader might not realize the parts of biology in this book. During this book, scientists at an Institute examine and test the virus to find out how it affects the human body. The first case infected with Marburg was a man named Charles Monet. He was a man who went to travel with his lady to Kitum Cave. While at the cave, he explores it and sees black-guano. Once he sees this he touches the guano and eventually gets sick. What Monet didn’t know was that he was infected with Marburg. When Monet’s vomit lands on the floor, he immediately gets admitted into the emergency room and is attended by Dr. Musoke. Then Dr. Musoke tried to open his airway by inserting a breathing tube in order for his lungs to get oxygen, and that is when Monet vomits. Black vomit comes out and this time lands in Dr. Musoke’s eyes. Monet goes into a deep coma and dies. The doctors never knew what Monet died of. The black vomit that Monet threw up in Dr. Musoke’s eyes was the virus’s way of getting from host to host. So the vomit that landed in his eyes was the virus’s home, but now Marburg would take Dr. Musoke as its host, and

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