i just learned how to do this :D.

Sebastian Rodriguez

AP Biology

Hot Zone by Richard Preston

A Novel for the Ages

To begin, Hot Zone by Richard Preston was an excellent novel. Extremely descriptive, the novel creates a movie in your head. However, the novel was written like if it was written in a journal. By that I mean, in the story it would switch between first person and third person narrative. So Preston would include all his encounters with any character that had even a little something to do with these virus strains. Therefore, Preston had the ability to make the crisis of these viruses’ epidemics seem like if they were to be happening right now. The novel just seemed so terrifying to the people that it affected, it seemed so real. I don’t want to ruin the affects of the virus on a human but it’s a horrifying scene that Preston tends to constantly repeat. It’s an imagine one can never get out of their head. Even with these images in my head it was a remarkable piece of work.

Now on to the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Preston describes the life of a man he calls Charles Monet. He writes about how Monet lived near Mount Elgon in Kenya. Preston tells a story about how Monet travels to Mount Elgon with one of his women friends and enters into Kitum cave. Doctors have no idea what he touched or what he breathed in. however, when Monet left that cave. He did not come out the same person. At first the Monet begins to get headaches, and then he begins to get headaches all around his head ranging from his eyeballs to his temple. Then backaches, then after a mere couple of days he loses all sight of life, he just sits in bed lifeless. His co-workers troubled about his health they take him to a hospital where they inject him with some antibiotics that have no affect on bettering his health. They send him to Nairobi Hospital, having enough strength to get on a plane he goes off to Nairobi. Imagine, Monet is a ticking time bomb full of a virus that kills 1 in 4 people that are infected and he is going on a pact airplane. While on the plane to Nairobi, Monet begins to get even sicker and begins to go into his final stages of infection. He begins to throw up black blood and his nose begins to bleed and refuses to clot. He soon gets to the hospital where he waits in line to get taken care of in one of those waiting rooms. Where he soon crashes and bleeds out where he is then taken care of by Dr. Musoke. He tried to put him on a gurney but Monet kept throwing up black vomit that got all over Dr Musoke, on his fingers, his mouth, all over him. Monet later died, he died a horrible death that no one in the world should have to go through so much pain, as one would expect, and Dr. Musoke also comes down with this virus, but is treated and to this day is still living.

They soon are able to diagnose the virus as Marburg virus one of the 3 Ebola viruses. People believed yellow fever was deadly that killed 5% of its contaminated. Now Marburg kills 25% of its infected. Imagine compared to 1 in 20 which was yellow fever to now 1 in 4.

They describe a family in the book called the Jaax family. They worked in the military in fort Detrick as pathologist, who worked with viruses. They describe 4 different levels of hot viruses. Marburg would be categorized as level 4 because there is not cure for it and you will die if you come in direct contact with that virus. Preston continues to write about an incident in where while working with Marburg that Nancy Jaax’s spacesuit became contaminated with come blood from a monkey she had to dissect that had “bled out”. Earlier that day she got a huge cut in the same hand that had become contaminated. She runs out to see if it had gone through all the gloves she had on. Luckily the last glove she had one stayed intact and saved her. In the next chapter ‘Ebola River’ we get the first real cases Ebola Zaire that has a death rate of 90% percent. This is a high death rate for a virus. Almost none will survive. The hospital reaches Yambuku Mission hospital where nuns would give injections to clients who come in to try to make them feel better. Soon the whole hospital becomes gravely infected. And Sister M.E. goes to Zaire for treatment where no one can save her and soon she dies. Medical teams and the army go into Yambuku hospital to secure the area and not let anyone in or out. The outbreak soon disappears as soon as it came and samples of Sister M.E.’s blood travels around the world and is identified to be related to Marburg and is named Ebola.

Later the novel changes over to the death of a Dutch boy named Peter Cardinal who died at Nairobi Hospital. Witch similar symptoms to Marburg. It is later found out that he and Monet both had visited Kitum Cave.

A scientist named Johnson travels to Kenya and does experiments on the cave to see if any animals they had live in the cave would come up with signs of Marburg. However in the end, none did. Therefore, Johnson goes back home to USAMRIID, and he ends up keeping his supplies in case they come through some kind of break through.

From there we move to the more important parts of the novel when the virus moves over here to the United States. We come to a monkey lab called Reston in Virginia. The monkeys they get are from Kenya in Africa. These monkeys are extremely violent, and have a leader and this leader will fight to the death if they see a human or another monkey tries to disobey them. Therefore, a lot of monkeys tend to die and bleed all over other monkeys. So one day at the monkey house in Reston monkeys in room F began to die. later in the chapter we find out that all the monkeys in that room die and soon this virus spreads to other rooms which proves its airborne. Dan Dalgard, the doctor for the monkeys thinks it’s a virus that is deadly to monkeys and harmless to humans to he send a spleen sample of a dead monkey to a virologist named Peter Jahrling who though it was SIM (simian hemorrhagic fever).

An intern at USAMRIID named Tom Geisbert goes to check on the test tube with the monkey’s blood and takes a whiff. If a blood sample has bacteria it has an odor and if it doesn’t it’s infected with a virus and apparently it did not have a virus. So they prepare the tubes for later testing and this chapter “exposure” ends with a cliffhanger with the fact that a virus incubates in a human for 3 to 13 days before you begin having headaches. =/.

On thanksgiving, the Jaax family has to drive Nancy’s father to get cancer treatment. And Jerry Jaax is still suffering from depression because his brother was murdered not long ago and he is obsessed over finding the killer.

Now back to the test tube. Tom Geisbert checks the blood under a microscope and his blood skips a beat. He notices the cells have been blown apart. And he remembers that it looks exactly like the blood from the Cardinal case. Terrified hes infected he finishes up the lab. He meets up with the other scientist and they agree to keep it quiet between the others and check their blood continually for viruses so they can avoid getting thrown into a room of quarantine.

Tom Geisbert confirms that the monkeys at Reston have Ebola Zaire, and Jahrling tells Dalgard about how the monkeys are infected with a filovirus but he doesn’t tell him how bad the situation really is. It was Jahrling’s job to find out what kind of virus it was and if it matched another virus under a scope it would glow. And can you imagine that it matched Sister M.E who had Ebola Zaire. Dalgard soon becomes more worries when one of the monkey’s caretakers had died from a heart attack. Therefore, Geisbert lets him have the truth about the virus. The United States ends up finally coming together so deal with this issue and come to a census that while the army handles the outbreak in Reston and the CDS will handle any human outbreaks of Ebola. They all come together at Reston to finally be able to operate on these monkeys and try to find a cure for the virus.

Now more and more people begin to become sick in the USAMRIID. Two people now sick one is sent to a hospital where he should have been sent to quarantine and the news world is there to be infected. Jerry Jaax ends up taking control of the army and takes care of the sick monkeys. He ends up knocking them out and taking blood test before killing them. More and more events happen including a workers suit having a hole in it and her having to be taken away from the building. A scientist named Thomas Ksiazek ends up finding away to find out if someone is contaminated with Ebola and Jahrling continues to be untainted by the virus. Day by day worse things happen in the House and monkey contaminated with Ebola escapes and one monkey attacks the same woman that had trouble with her suit the day before. The monkey that escaped soon enough is put down.

In the end they create experiments with fresh new monkeys with Ebola. This Ebola tends to not kill humans and has more flu like symptoms. They name this type of Ebola, Ebola Reston.

In the end, Preston goes to the monkey house and to Kintum cave and finds potential hosts but never really gets a definite answer on where the virus came from.