Richard Preston
Richard PrestonIn 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...
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