The Hot Zone Ebola Summary

“The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus” by Richard Preston presents the true story of Ebola’s origin’s in an entertaining yet realistic manner. Preston does a fantastic job introducing the reader to Ebola and Marburg, their transmission routes, symptoms, and how research is done in Hot Labs.

Ebola and Marburg are filo viruses shaped like tangled ropes or intertwines snakes. Once they’ve infected their patients, they wreak havoc on the connective and intestinal tissue. Nine out of ten people who are infected die and post mortem examination find that the internal organs of most people are either “liquefied or rotten”. The origin of the virus is unknown but its preferred mode of transmission is direct contact

with the bodily fluids of those who are infected. Very little is known about Ebola still; of its 7 proteins, only three are well understood and those proteins wreck the immune systems within 10 days. Once inside the cell, the virus takes over the cell where it replicates and turns the cell into “a bag of bricks” known as inclusion bodies which burst out of the cell once there are no more resources. This cycle is repeated until the host dies.

For many of the pathogens discussed in this class, understanding the route of transmission is crucial for not only understanding how it’s treated but also how to prevent infection, especially for those who work in the healthcare setting.

Such is the case of Charles Monet and Dr. Musoke. Within a week of being in Kitum cave, Charles Monet fell ill and began feeling pain behind his eyeballs. Within three days of that, he was coughing up blood, eyes motionless, and not engaged a description we see for both humans and animals affected by the various strains of the disease. By the time Monet got to Nairobi, his bowels had ripped away from his body “a sound reminiscent of the ripping of a bed sheet” spilling out of him mixed with his intestinal

lining.

While on the plane travelling to Nairobi, Monet was coughing and spitting up of sputum which was laden with black specks known now as blood clots. Unknown to Monet, the connective tissue in his body was dissolving; the virus has essentially turned his body into a liquid mass. Monet’s symptoms on the plane brings to mind the public’s concern about the transmission of Ebola with the current crisis. One can only imagine how dangerous Ebola would be if it were to be airborne. We know how infectious Rhinovirus, the common cold is, passed via aerosol droplets from coughing and sneezing. How much more someone who is coughing up blood that is laden with one of the most dangerous filo viruses in the world.

With such deadly diseases, identifying the source is crucial to understanding how it works.

This is the work that Nancy Jax, and those who work at various bio containment hospitals do. Marburg is distinctly an African virus that was first spotted in monkeys brought from Uganda to make vaccines in Germany. It was from these monkeys that the virus first jumped to humans. Dr. Musoke survived the infection and the antibodies in his blood is being used to conduct research for vaccines and understanding of antibodies. Much of the same research continues with the current crisis where serum from those who survived the disease on their own is being tested for to create a vaccine, while serum from those who were given experimental drugs is being used to treat others in the US who are

affected.

Ebola and Marburg’s deadly tentacles are not limited to humans alone. At the Bio containment suite at USAMRIID that was specifically set up for Ebola monkeys were beginning to die. Much like it does in humans, their eyes went motionless, their tissues and intestinal organs liquefied and their either bleed out of went into shock. Since the monkeys were not in direct contact with one another, this was the first time that the disease could be airborne, possibly from aerosol droplets. It was strange that the virus could spread in such a lab where ultraviolet rays are used to kill the virus (level 2), double rubber gloves are worn (level 3), and workers have to go through a 20 minute decontamination shower (level 4), not to mention the room is kept under negative air pressure to keep the virus in.

A similar outbreak occurred at the Hazelton Research Company where over 16,000 monkeys are held for inspection of infections. Upon their arrival from the Philippines, many of the monkeys began to fall ill and die with symptoms similar to Musoke and Monet. It was at this point where we are introduced to one of the most important methods for detecting the filo virus. Blood from the infected animals is placed in a slide and ultraviolet light is introduced to make the virus glow. Fortunately, this particular strain turned out to be harmless to humans, luckily for Geisburg and his assistant who had inhaled remnants of the dead monkeys.

Four years after the Nancy Jaxx Incident and the Hazelton Research Company, Richard Preston visits Africa and explains that the Kinshasa highway used to be a dirt road was the very same highway where the AIDS virus spread through in the 1970s. Richard Preston ends the book by explaining the crucial role that globalization has to play in the spread of disease. The sick crab eating monkeys from the Philippines and Charles Monet’s plane trip could have been deadly if there were to occur today. The current Ebola crisis speaks directly to this. Many of the cases outside of Guinea and Liberia were directly due to travel. Either by patients who were fleeing for better treatment, or from healthcare workers who went to these countries to treat infected patients.