The Hot Zone: Making of A Global Disease

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Living in the era of globalization, the economic benefits that accompany the fact of the borders being erased can be eliminated by the threats that might occur as a result. In that sense, the threats are consequences of human actions are only a small part of such danger.

Diseases such as the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is only a tip of the iceberg in term of consequences and threats, where viruses such as Ebola which danger sufficiently exceeds that of the AIDS. The level of mortality of Ebola’s victims along with the fact that there are no vaccines and cures makes this virus a real underestimated threat. Despite the period of more than twenty years studying these viruses, scientists could not find answers for many questions related to these viruses, their carriers, eruptions, and the high death rate caused by Ebola.

The answers to such questions were purposefully sought by scientists for many years, but there were no key finds. In addition, a set of quite strange circumstances that accompanied the start of the epidemic in Africa gave a certain halo of mysticism to everything related to such viruses. Possibly, due to such fact, the non-fiction book “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston became a widely known bestseller, which described in detail the course of the infection and the disease. In that regard, this paper analyzes Preston’s book a dramatic account of the emergence of Ebola, addressing the global nature of such disease.

The chilling factor of Preston’s book is the realization of the fact that no part of the world is safe from the disease. In that sense, the setting of the narration, i.e. in Nairobi and Washington, although not giving a large scale, is an indication that such factor as distance and geographic location is no longer an obstacle for diseases. The author also used a reference to the usage of a nuclear weapon as a comparison, and the description used certainly makes the Ebola virus more horrifying in that sense. The description of the disease course and the symptoms of the virus infection that killed Charles Monet, i.e. Marburg virus, was compared to the effect of the radiation.

Marburg virus … affects humans somewhat like nuclear radiation, damaging virtually all of the tissues in their bodies. It attacks with particular ferocity the internal organs, connective tissue, intestines, and skin. … all the survivors lost their hair—they went bald or partly bald. Their hair died at the roots and fell out in clumps as if they had received radiation burns. Hemorrhage occurred from all orifices of the body….the skin peeled off their faces, hands, feet, and genitals. ¹

Looking at such symptoms, which are described as having a similar effect to radiation, the worst thing is that this description is of patients who were recovering from the virus which was “was the mildest of the three filovirus sisters”² The worst of the three, i.e. Ebola Zaire, where the killing rate in people infected by it is ninety percent.

In the book, there is also a comparison made between the Ebola virus and HIV. In one statement this comparison raises the danger of the Ebola virus to another level, where “Ebola does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to accomplish.”³ Nevertheless, the quickness of the Ebola virus can be seen as two side effects. Speaking of Aids, the periods in which the virus might be inactive, the infected person can spread the virus to more people, whereas an epidemic of the Ebola virus is just “a slate wiper in humans.”

In that sense, it could have been imagined if the Ebola virus had similar characteristics as HIV, whether it would have been successful for the U.S. Army and Center for Disease Control to track the virus quickly without the attention being brought by the rapidity of victims killed.

Looking at the history of diseases, it can be seen that other known diseases that were also fatal in most cases are somewhat localized. The slow pace of diseases such as malaria, whereby slow pace is meant the expansions from the location of the diseases through the world, might have been an obstacle for such diseases to be of known origins. In that sense, in this era, it takes only several hours to change one location from one part of the world to another.

Additionally, diseases such as malaria were known historically, where the large time frame allowed the disease to be controlled in terms of cure and known methods of transmission. Nevertheless, Ebola being found not a long time ago and in a period of medical breakthrough compared to previous centuries, the virus was somewhat controlled.

Additionally, an important outline is made through the book, which is that many diseases have southern origins, or African to be exact. Marburg for example has its name from a city in Germany where there was “a factory called the Behring Works, which produced vaccines using kidney cells from African green monkeys.”⁴

AIDS is also generally believed to come “from African primates, from monkeys and apes, and that it somehow jumped out of these animals into the human race.”⁵ In that sense, the natural conditions and the climate can be seen forming convenient conditions for different kinds of viruses to mutate and form new ones. The global aspects of the viruses expansions might differ in different historical epochs, where the flow of people from and to Africa was not as extensive as at these times.

It can be seen that the globalization of diseases can pose a great threat to humans. The book not only described the lethality of Ebola, but also the quickness by which it was prevented from breaking through in another part of the world. In that sense, it can be seen that the connectivity of the world that might allow the spread of a disease can also help to locate and provide more analysis on the origins and the causes of new occurrences of viruses.

Unfortunately, such a reaction did not help to establish all the factors that might play a role for this virus or similar to occur again. In the era where threats are coming from humans as well as nature, the most dangerous consequences when the first exploit the latter. The global aspect of the disease when the origin of the disease in another continent separated by an ocean does not guarantee that this disease will not occur anywhere else, which makes the population of different countries and continents equal in the possibility of being exposed to a threat.

Works Cited

Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Footnotes

Richard Preston, The Hot Zone, 1st Anchor Books ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1995) 29.
Preston, The Hot Zone 28.
Preston, The Hot Zone 50.
Preston, The Hot Zone 26.
Preston, The Hot Zone 30.

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The Hot Zone: Making of A Global Disease

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