“The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston, tells of the many incidents and cases of Ebola that broke out during our world from the 1960’s to 1990’s. It starts in Kitum Cave of Kenya, Africa, with the case of Charles Monet, who dies of an unknown disease that is later discovered to be Ebola. The book then tells of many other cases before Monet’s death. Several years after Monet’s death, a scientist named Nancy Jaax discovers a new strand of Ebola after examining tissue from monkeys who were dying in a of an “unknown” virus. The army is then alerted of this outbreak, and every monkey in the facility is euthanized, dissected, and has blood drawn for further study.…
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rainforest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of it’s victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientist is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this “hot virus”. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving detail accounts of this rare and lethal virus and how it crashes into the human race. This book proves that truth is really scarier than fiction.…
This newly discovered strain of Ebola has researchers interested, but they’re approaching the facility with many safety precautions. For example, they were required to wear protective suits and were expected to take a ten minute break after every one hour of work inside of the faciliy. Nancy Jaax and her husband Jerry would constantly remind their young privates to be cautious, to amplify the severity of the situation. Even though this newly discovered Ebola strain isn't deadly to humans; Ebola's ability to transform and adjust to new environments strikes fear into researchers knowing there's a possibility of a potential mutation in the virus. The military's take over of the Reston Monkey house was predictable, yet necessary. Strict precautions needed to be enforced and the military was the best fit for a successful lock down of the Reston virus. The killing of the monkey's was sad, but the threat of spreading the virus proves necessary for this situation. This piece was significant to the book because it once again strengthens the severity of the situation, it scares the audience into believing that this is a life or death scenario with all of the prearranged precautions being followed through by the U.S. Military. This relates to the most recent outbreak because of the intensity, not only in safety protocols but the dedication to effectively remove the virus and…
You board the plane, and sit right beside a young girl and her mother. Everyone on the plane has been infected by this virus that no one knows you have. It's been said that a deadly virus can travel through the entire world within two days once it gets into the travelling web. This virus has just entered the web. Everyone on this flight has been infected with the agent, and only time will tell if they will suffer from the effects of it or not. Ebola is an odd disease. It picks who it will destroy. There have been people emerged in the virus that was killing someone else, and come out without a scratch on them. The flight wears on, and you intercept turbulence. All the hot blood is shaken up in your stomach, and you feel the need to bring up liquid that should have been gone a long time ago. The flight attendant hands you an airsickness bag, you heave. The bag is filled up now, and there's more coming. You try to hold it in as you hand the flight attendant your bag that's starting to go soft from holding the contents of Ebola Zaire. The flight attendant also takes your second bag. You must have broken a blood vessel in your nose, because now your nose is bleeding uncoagulated blood. Your blood clotting…
A major part of this book was the outbreak of Ebola in Reston. Reston contained a monkey house for veterinary microbiology. Soon after a shipment of monkeys showed up, many of the monkeys began to bleed out and die. This caught the attention of USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases). USAMRIID sent army personnel and microbiologist to deal with the outbreak in the warehouse. They quarantined the building and killed all monkeys. They injected the monkeys with a sedative and once they were asleep, they were given a shot that stopped their hearts. The scientist performed…
During Project Ebola, two characters working in the USAMRIID are introduced, Nancy Jaax and Gene Johnson. Jaax is a very determined and strong-willed army veterinarian, she has a loving family consisting of her husband and two children. Johnson is a generally a timid person, he is an epidemiologist whose studies mainly focuses on Marburg and Ebola. They are both deeply terrified of Ebola, but are willing to risk their lives for a better understanding on the virus. On Nancy Jaax’s first day working in Biohazard Level 4, she puts on her space suit and Preston says, “Perhaps Nancy was in a bit of a hurry and did not inspect her spacesuit as closely as she should have.” (Preston 45). As for Johnson, Preston recalls his dreams as, “Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it.” (Preston 35). Both of these quotes suggest that a tragic incident shall soon unfold. These quotes are dark. These quotes give a feeling that cannot be shaken off, a prominent feeling of uncertainty and…
In 2011, the blockbuster, Contagion, was released, featuring several prominent actors. In summary, the movie is the story of a father who loses his wife and son to a completely brand new virus. This new virus, dubbed MEV-1, originated from a bat in Hong Kong. The bat bit a fruit then dropped it into a pigpen infecting the pig that consumed the fruit with the bat’s virus. While pig was prepped to be cooked, the chef touched the pig’s mouth, getting virus on his hand and shakes the hands of woman, Beth, making her patient zero for MEV-1. The disease then spread to others who come in contact with Beth or Beth’s belongings. After the CDC realized the existence of this virus, they promptly started researching it. After several days of research, scientists were able to determine that the virus was “15 to 19 kilobases in length and containing six to ten genes, typical of a paramyxovirus” containing genes from bats and pigs, which attach to receptors found on cells in the respiratory and the central nervous system. The virus is seemingly able to be contracted through the respiratory tract, but kills the host by making its way to the brain and causing encephalitis. The vaccine for the virus was developed by first growing the virus in fetal bat cells in culture, propagating and isolating, and finally inoculating rhesus monkeys with attenuated and dead forms of the virus. Out of desperation for working vaccine, after observing one monkey surviving during the vaccination trials, one of the researchers injected herself with the tested vaccine given to the surviving chimp. By doing so, she skipped the entire clinical trials portion of developing vaccines and had the vaccine fastracked to be mass-produced.…
The Nipah Virus causes severe illness. A person with this infection will get a respiratory disease, a term that includes extreme conditions affecting the organs and tissues that make gaseous exchange possible in organisms, and includes conditions of the upper respiratory tract, trachea, bronchi, alveoli, pleura and the nerves and muscles of breathing. (Source c)…
A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of other organisms. A virus is a small parasite that cannot reproduce by itself. Once it infects a susceptible cell, however, a virus can direct the cell to produce many more viruses. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, such as animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.…
This section further introduces the reader to Dr. Nancy Jaax, who is employed in Level 4 Biosafety containment area at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID). She has been assigned to research on Ebola virus. Preston points how Nancy first cuts her hand with a butcher knife while she is trying to open a can. Later, she is almost exposed to Ebola, through the open wound, while operating on a dead EBOV-infected monkey.…
It was then that a secret military lab went to work to attempt to stop the spread and outbreaks of Ebola in its tracks. Lab specialist much like Nancy Jaax, set up an experiment where they observed the destruction of the Ebola virus through monkeys. This story is one that tells the traumatizing stories of the mysterious and deadly Ebola virus and its sudden appearance in the human race. It tells the stories of many people’s hopeless fight to survive against Ebola, while it ponders the origin of the hot agent that slowly destroys human existence.…
A week later, the death toll continues to rise but people were not putting it together that the Andromeda has not actually been contained and it is still harming people. Vaccines are being created left and right to try to keep people from getting infected. Nothing that is being tried is working. Everyone who is infected begin to be taken to an isolated base in the dessert of Texas. There are families being split…
Movie starts modern day which is 27 years later from the discovery of the virus from the Motaba River Valley. The United States military is called in again this time to a village that has been devastated by a virus that killed all the villagers. This time Col. Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman) is in charge and the medical man of the village leaves the ominous message the medicine man of the forest believes that this virus is the gods revenge or the cutting down of the trees. We follow the relationship of the Col. Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman), and his ex-wife Robby Keogh (René Russo) both experts in disease-causing microorganisms. We watch the disintegration of their relationship as she takes a job for the centers disease control and prevention…
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.…
In the late 1900s there were these unknown diseases that were making people die out of nowhere. This made people all around frightened to their wits. No one knew a cure for it or where it originated from. A disease known as Marburg which was first thought to be found in a guy named Charles Monet, caused him to have massive hemorrhages and clotting. This was a deadly disease which could be caught by the person who has it by as easily as it seeping through an open wound. Marburg is a filovirus which can be comprised with two types of viruses called Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan. Ebola Zaire is the worst out of the three, killing nine out of ten humans who have it. An incident occurred in Reston, Virginia where monkeys were being transported from the Philippines to a monkey house. Some of the monkeys started to drop dead for some unknown reason, so Dan Dalgard, the veterinarian who cared for the monkeys, contacted the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to help diagnose the case. Dr. Peter Jahlring, who was a part of the USAMRIID institute, tested the blood of the monkeys. To his horror it came up positive for Ebola Zaire, the deadliest of the strains of Ebola. This caused a panic in him of which he rushed to his head leader and told him about it. No one wanted an outbreak to happen of Ebola Zaire so the C.D.C. and the army banded together to try and stop this horrific disease from spreading. Dalgard turned the monkey house over to them in which they terminated all the monkeys and bleached and scrubbed…