The Hotzone Essay, Research Paper

Book Report: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

In October of l989, Macaque monkeys, housed at the Reston Primate

Quarantine Unit in Reston, Virginia, began dying from a mysterious disease

at an alarming rate. The monkeys, imported from the Philippines, were to

be sold as laboratory animals. Twenty-nine of a shipment of one hundred

died within a month. Dan Dalgard, the veterinarian who cared for the

monkeys, feared they were dying from Simian Hemorrhagic Fever, a disease

lethal to monkeys but harmless to humans. Dr. Dalgard decided to enlist

the aid of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious

Diseases (USAMRIID) to help diagnose the case. On November 28th, Dr. Peter

Jahlring of the Institute was in his lab testing a virus culture from the

monkeys. Much to his horror, the blood tested positive for the deadly

Ebola Zaire virus. Ebola Zaire is the most lethal of all strains of Ebola.

It is so lethal that nine out of ten of its victims die. Later, the

geniuses at USAMRIID found out that it wasn t Zaire, !

but a new strain of Ebola, which they named Ebola Reston. This was added

to the list of strains: Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, and now, Reston. These

are all level-four hot viruses. That means there are no vaccines and there

are no cures for these killers.

In 1976 Ebola climbed out of its primordial hiding place in the

jungles of Africa, and in two outbreaks in Zaire and Sudan wiped out six

hundred people. But the virus had never been seen outside of Africa and

the consequences of having the virus in a busy suburb of Washington DC is

too terrifying to contemplate. Theoretically, an airborne strain of Ebola

could emerge and circle the world in about six weeks. Ebola virus victims

usually “crash and bleed,” a military term which literally means the virus

attacks every organ of the body and transforms every part of the body into

a digested slime of virus particles. A big point that Preston wanted to

get across was the fact that the public thinks that the HIV virus is quite

possibly the most horrible virus on Earth, when no one takes into mind the

effects and death of the victims of Ebola. Preston shows how Ebola and

Marburg (a close relative of Ebola) is one hundred times more contagious,

one hundred times as lethal, and one hundr!

ed times as fast as HIV. “Ebola does in ten days what it takes HIV ten

years to accomplish,” wrote Richard Preston. The virus, though, has a hard

time spreading, because the victims usually die before contact with a

widespread amount of civilians. If there were to be another outbreak in

North America, the results would be unspeakable.

Upon reading The Hot Zone, one could easily believe that this

compelling yet terrifying story sprang from the imaginations of Stephen

King or Michael Crichton. But the frightening truth is that the events

actually occurred and that “could-be-catastrophe” was avoided by the

combined heroic efforts of various men and women from USAMRIID and the

Center for Disease Control. Preston writes compassionately and admiringly

of the doctors, virologists and epidemiologists who are the real-life

Indiana Jones’ of the virus trail. Some like Dr. Joe McCormick, Karl

Johnson, and CJ Peters spent years tracking down deadly viruses in the

jungles of South America and Africa, some narrowly escaping death. Their

work is filled with courage, brilliance and sometimes petty rivalries.

Others, like Dr. Nancy Jaax have lived rather conventional lives, aside

from the fact that they don a space suit and work with highly lethal

viruses on a regular basis.

Preston has written a fast-paced and fascinating novel of medical

panic. His gripping narrative is filled with horrifying and gore-filled

descriptions and tension-building plot turns. From depictions of events at

a Belgian Hospital in Africa to the nerve-racking laboratory scenes in

Virginia, he is adept at keeping the reader riveted. At the conclusion the

reader is left with the chilling and fact based haunting after thought

“what if?”