The Hot Zone Essay

“The Hot Zone,” by Richard Preston, is a thriller true story that explains an incident in a suburb outside of Washington D.C. in 1989. The book focuses on four Biohazard level 4 viruses: Marburg, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, and Ebola Reston. In the beginning we are introduced to some background cases, such as Charles Monet and Dr. Shem Musoke. As the book goes on we learn about how a strain of the Ebola virus broke out at a monkey facility, outside of the nation’s capital, in Reston, Virginia. The Army and the C.D.C. worked together to contain the situation and was later known that this form of Ebola was not harmful to humans. The overall theme of the book is never underestimate the power of nature because it is filled with great mystery and

misunderstanding.
This book enhanced my views on the world. Since this book was a true story I learned a lot form it. I vaguely knew anything about the Ebola viruses and similar viruses, I had only heard it on the news or other forms, such as the newspaper; so when I found out what it did and how many people it affected I was shocked. In the first two chapters of the book I got a very vivid image of what people went through in Africa, so I guess the book did change my view of the world. It made me realize that the world is far more terrifying than I had imagined because of all the unknown diseases and viruses that it has lurking in the dark corners waiting to make an appearance.
I had only one problem throughout the text that challenged my views was the amount of animals they killed for their research.

I understood that the animals in the monkey house had to be put down in fear of a nation outbreak but the large number of animals that were used in Kitum Cave did not. The text states that “All of the sentinel animals remained healthy, and the blood and tissue samples from the other animals, insects, birds…showed no signs of Marburg virus;” this goes to show that killing those innocent animals was not as necessary as they initially thought. I do agree that some animals are needed for scientific research but there should only be a certain amount allowed to prevent innocent animal

killings.
The book addressed a lot of things that I personally care about.

This book is based off of a killer virus that has the potential to harm me and many others that I care about. I think this book relates to anything, whether it be your family, community, or faith because many doctors and scientist that were stated in the text worked hard and risked their lives in order to know more about this unknown virus and are working for some form of treatment. This is important to me because then the government will know what to do if an Ebola virus emerges throughout the country and if our science has evolved by then, then we will know how to treat it in order to minimize the casualties. At the end of the book, Preston says, “Ebola had risen in these rooms, flashed its colors, fed, and subsided into the forest. It will be back” (411). This further explains that Ebola had already come once and there is a very big possibility that come

again.
My overall reaction to the text is fear to how nature can literally wipe all humans out. “The more one contemplates the hot virus, the less they look like parasites and the more they begin to look like a predator” (136); this sentence really allowed me to see that the virus is just there to kill. Something that looks so beautiful, complex, and microscopic is just a predator in nature and we are its prey. It just amazes me how something so small can destroy something so big. This book is very well written and has an interesting tale to tell. I am not sure I would recommend this book to anyone but I would like to read something else like this in the future. Science and its secrets has always interested me and I’m intrigued to find out what more it has to offer.
This book provides a lot of information so that the reader can get familiar with the symptoms of Ebola and Marburg disease. Although there is currently not a cure, a person can have some idea of how to handle the situation, by taking the infected to a hospital to be put in quarantine. To this day there has not been an outbreak of Ebola in the states but two Americans did contract the virus while working in West Africa. There was a controversial issue when the government gave the two citizens an experimental vaccine that is very rare and scarce. The controversy was why give it to the two Americans that were just infected when there are thousands dying in Africa? Overall, if a drug is found to at least slow down the symptoms and replication of the virus inside a human, that would be the best alternative to the gruesome effects as we read in the book.