|
| |
"HOT ZONE, THE" (RICHARD PRESTON).
Term Paper ID:24887
|
|
|
Essay Subject:
Reviews work on history of filoviruses & outbreak of [Ebola] virus at primate facility in 1989 in Washington, D.C.... More...
|
5 Pages / 1125 Words
1 sources, 6 Citations,
MLA Format
$20.00
Return to List of Papers
|
Paper Abstract:
Reviews work on history of filoviruses & outbreak of [Ebola] virus at primate facility in 1989 in Washington, D.C.
Paper Introduction:
“The Hot Zone,” by Richard Preston, outlines the history of the three filoviruses: Marburg, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Zaire. The account consists of scientific information about the viruses, portrayals of the earliest victims, and descriptions of the medical procedures used to counteract the viruses. The bulk of the book deals with the outbreak of what appeared to be Ebola Zaire at a primate facility on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and the actions undertaken by the United States Army to contain the situation.
Early in 1980, a Frenchman living alone near Mount Elgon in western Kenya traveled to Kitum Cave; seven days later, he became extremely ill. By the time he arrived at Nairobi Hospital, his internal organs had become obstructed with blood clots, and his brain had begun to “liquefy,” eradicating his personality (14).
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
The Army was equipped for such a project, having both the scientificexpertise and trained soldiers willing to risk their lives. Later in the same year, a similar virus emerged in Yambuku MissionHospital in Zaire, where the Belgian nuns were using the same five needlesto give injections to people all day long. The relatively high kill rates of the two Ebola viruses meant thatpeople died "so fast that they didn't have time to infect other peoplebefore they died" (69). The mortality rate among victims is one infour, compared with one in two for Ebola Sudan and nine in ten for EbolaZaire. After violent outbreaks among monkey and humanpopulations, the Ebola viruses seemed to disappear suddenly, causingresearchers to speculate that the illnesses were not airborne, buttransmitted by direct contact, through blood and other bodily substances. The decontamination effort went on for several weeks; after scrubbingthe floors and walls of the primate facility with bleach, the team releasedformaldehyde gas into the rooms and air ducts. Bythe time he arrived at Nairobi Hospital, his internal organs had becomeobstructed with blood clots, and his brain had begun to "liquefy,"eradicating his personality (14). However, theCenters for Disease Control in Atlanta had the official mandate fromCongress to control human disease, so there was a political quandary athand. One of the nurses who had been tending to the dying nuns began tofeel unwell and knew herself to be sick with the virus. On December 6, it wasdetermined through laboratory tests that these workers' systems had clearedthemselves of the virus somehow. The monkeys quickly becameill and died, and a human caretaker, while performing a necropsy on a deadmonkey, became exposed to the virus through a cut on his thumb. In the waiting room of the hospital, helost consciousness while vomiting huge quantities of black-speckled blood,and began to hemorrhage from all of the orifices in his body. Although bats roostingnear his desk in the factory may have transmitted the virus to thestorekeeper, researchers are not certain about where he became infected.After his death, two other men working at the factory, with desks near thefirst victim's, died of the same disease. The Hot Zone. Before dying,he vomited blood onto Dr. Musoke, who subsequently became ill with the samemysterious condition. Works CitedPreston, Richard. Onceagain, monkeys began to die of the same symptoms that had been observed in1989: those of Ebola. A schoolteacher who had recentlyhandled raw monkey meat was among those who received injections; he mayhave spread the virus to the hospital, or contracted it from his injection.In any event, he was the first known case of Ebola Zaire, which proceededto erupt simultaneously in fifty-five villages in the vicinity of thehospital (71). Devastatingthe patient and medical staff populations alike, the virus spread throughthe use of dirty needles and other careless practices, such as not usingrubber gloves when operating on sick patients. "The Hot Zone," by Richard Preston, outlines the history of the threefiloviruses: Marburg, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Zaire. Of the three filoviruses, so named for their thread-like structure,Marburg is the least lethal. Samples of Musoke's blood serum were sent to two outsidelaboratories; results came back that the samples were positive for Marburgvirus, about which little was known. This time, instead of putting the monkeys to death,the Army and the CDC decided to isolate the monkeys and watch the course ofthe virus as it spread through the population. He neverbecame infected, but the primate facility was since abandoned and primateimportation severely restricted for a time. Marburg, while an African organism,was brought to Germany by a shipment of monkeys and caused an eruption ofsickness and death at a vaccine factory called Behring Works in 1967. He conjectures that "theearth is mounting an immune response against the human species" (287) inthe form of highly destructive agents like the filoviruses and even AIDS. Spores of bacillus subtilisniger were dispersed around the site to test the effectiveness of theircleanup; if the spores died, it was acceptable to assume that everythingelse had as well. At the end of the book, the author travels to Mount Elgon and KitumCave, the presumed birthplace of the filoviruses. The virus had entered their bloodstreamsomehow, without their having come into physical contact with infectedtissue (253). What concerned the government officials most about the two outbreaksin Reston was that two of the humans infected, the ones in the firstoutbreak, had not cut themselves. None of the spores placed by the Army personnel survived. In 1976, a storekeeper in a cotton factory in Southern Sudan becameinfected with what later was known as Ebola Sudan. On December 1, the USAMRIID team entered the facility, dressed inprotective "space suits," and began the process of euthanizing four hundredand fifty monkeys. The virus eventually spreadthroughout the region, until it reached the hospital at Maridi. However, by December 4, two primate facility workers hadbecome ill, one with a heart attack and the other with flu-like symptoms;both conditions were consistent with Ebola infection. In 199 , after the Army had declared the primate facility clean, itwas restocked with more monkeys from the same farm in the Philippines. In 1989, at the Primate Quarantine Unit in Reston, Virginia, a groupof monkeys in a room died overnight from a mysterious illness. Although itwas discovered that the monkeys and the virus had come from a farm in thePhilippines, none of the workers on that farm had died of the virus.Monkeys had died in large numbers, but they had not infected theirhandlers. New York: Random House, 1994. Tracing the origin of the virus proved more challenging. The mystery has not been solved to this day. Theveterinarian in charge, Dan Dalgard, ordered the rest of the animals inthat room to be sacrificed so that the illness would not spread, and sentsamples of the dead monkeys' tissues to a lab at the United States ArmyMedical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). The type of Ebola that surfaced at theprimate facility is now called Ebola Reston, because it is almost identicalto Ebola Zaire, but does not seem to make humans sick. Thus, it had to be contained, or the nearby capital, Washington,D.C., was in danger of contamination. In 1986, Army researchers had exposedmonkeys to airborne virus particles and all but one subject had perished(156). It was decided that USAMRIID would execute the biocontainment missionat the primate facility, and the CDC would handle any human victims of thethreatened outbreak. USAMRIID came to two conclusions: that the illness was probably EbolaZaire, since the tissue samples reacted to that virus in the laboratory,and that it could well be airborne. The bulk of the book deals with the outbreak of what appeared tobe Ebola Zaire at a primate facility on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.,and the actions undertaken by the United States Army to contain thesituation. While they did not become ill, it is all but certain thatEbola can spread through the air. Yet, although shetraveled all around a large city during her illness, and came into contactwith thirty-seven people, she did not spread the virus to anyone else.Although the nurse herself died, the fact that no one else did as a resultof contact with her caused the Ebola Zaire virus to be enshrouded inmystery. Early in 198 , a Frenchman living alone near Mount Elgon in westernKenya traveled to Kitum Cave; seven days later, he became extremely ill. Days later,Dalgard found that five monkeys had died in a room two doors down from thefirst affected room, meaning that the virus had spread and that, strangely,it had skipped a room. The account consists ofscientific information about the viruses, portrayals of the earliestvictims, and descriptions of the medical procedures used to counteract theviruses.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
Click here to request an essay written just for you.
|
|
|
