Hot Zone Post 6

I read pages 400-411.  Richard Preston does a wonderful job closing the novel with remarks very similar to a science fiction movie or book.  It ends with the statement that Ebola continues to hide in the forests and will come out of hiding again someday.  This is a cool cut-off statement that forces you to think into the future and the events that might occur there.  Before the ending of the story, there is another segment about Kitum Cave.  There is another journey to Kitum Cave seemingly separate from the main part of the novel.  Space suits are used, but not to the extent of a full operation.  The goal is to discover possible virus sources, not find the exact sources of the  virus.  They never exactly figure out the source of the virus, but they do find many potential sources.  Just like in the movie Sahara, there is a large outbreak of virus.  All the countries and organizations strive to contain it.  In the novel, the organizations are  USAMRIID and the US army.  In the movie, the main organization is WHO or World Heath Organization.  As a prevailing theme, viruses are hard to kill and wipe off the planet.  In essence, it is virtually impossible with today's laboratory sciences.  If the US would get rid of all Polio particles, they would be left with nothing for vaccines in the case of a biological war.  When viruses do poke their heads out of the closet, most nations work together to contain them for the good of humanity.                                                                    

Hot Zone Post 5

  I read pages 273-400.  This portion of the novel goes further into the nuking of the monkey facility in Reston, VA.  The monkey situation becomes a little dicey.  The operation in full is to put the monkeys to sleep with Ketamine, and then to kill them with concentrated doses of sedative.  The monkeys of course do not want to be trapped and killed, so many of them put up a fight.  Some of the monkeys awaken after being injected with Ketamine, and others simply resist being dominated.  Many of the monkeys are too sick to fight back however.  They would have ended up dying anyways.  One monkey even escapes from his cage and leads a chase on for about an hour.  It is hard for the scientists to catch him because they are in literally space suits.  This book actually makes me think of PETA a bunch, because of the caged animals.  PETA is always advocating animal freedom, and is criticizing capturing them.  Several years back, a group of activists actually broke into a mink farm designed to create mink coats.  They released hundreds and hundreds of minks in an effort to save them from their misery.  Unfortunately, most of the minks died or were killed soon after the incident, because they had no survival skills in winter.  Some of the workers in the monkey facility facility had desires to save the monkeys as well.  Unfortunately, not all good ideas in theory are good ideas in practice.  If the disease would have escaped the Reston facility, millions of civilians would have been at risk for the worst death known to the human race.

Hot Zone Post 4

I read pages 257-273.  I didn't read a ton this week because I was busy studying all week long.  These 20 or so pages go into Dan Dalgard's experiences in Africa dealing with the ebola virus.  Dan almost gets the virus from a dirty needle, but the patient actually has West Nile instead.  He gets lucky on this account.  We are lucky in this day and age that there has not been a major outbreak of flu.  This kind of relates to the novel in the sense of luck.  The human race is overdue for a flu outbreak.  On average, we have an outbreak every twenty years.  Although we had the swine flu recently, that can hardly be called an "outbreak".  With the swine flu, it was only moderately dangerous in rural areas of Mexico where there was minimal or poor health care.  In America, people have amazingly good health care compared to the rest of the world even though they don't like to admit it.  By setting up such good health care, we are essentially dooming ourselves for the next big "plague" or "flu".  We are upsetting the natural order of things by unnaturally keeping population from checking itself with disease.  Unfortunately, there is no way of ultimately no way of stopping the inevitable, but we should be warned first.  Epidemics usually originate in third world countries, and begin to work their ways around the world via airplanes, ships, and potentially even through animals.  Everything will be shut down: schools, jobs, airports, etc.  Hospitals may even be limited in their access to patients.  Sometime dire measures will be taken in the future.

Hot Zone Post 3

I read pages 207-257 this week.  There is a monkey house in VA where monkeys are dying of an unknown agent.  The agent is determined to be Ebola and is secluded and kept secret from the rest of the world.  The CDC and the army have a meeting on how to go about handling the situation.  The army wants to take over the operation while the CDC wants to ensure the thing gets taken care of carefully.  This is like the X-Files when the government tries to keep the aliens secret from the general populous. The information could cause a panic so it is just better that people know nothing of the situation.  The scary situation here is that everything is real and is fully possible of a global outbreak.  The virus turns the human victim into a host similarly to the prospects in the X-Files.  The human walks around for a couple of days passing the virus on without even knowing about it.  Then the person usually goes to a hospital or to their bed where they become very sick and where they require close medical attention.  At a certain point either the person gets better or they bleed out.  If they are becoming better, they will be affected by great anger surges.  If the later possibility occurs, the person will collapse mentally and physically.  They will go into spasms spattering blood on everything and everyone nearby.  Within hours of collapsing, the virus liquifies the host's organs making it difficult to examine for medical research and making it even harder to develop vaccines.  Just like the X-Files, the virus covers its tracks while continuing to survive in hosts.  Its natural host is still alive somewhere in the tropics of Africa unaware of what lives within it.  It is an animal, plant, or even possibly an insect.

The Hot Zone Blog 2

I continued reading The Hot Zone This week pages 112-207.  Richard Preston does an amazing job at captivating the reader because the stories within the novel are genuinely non-fiction.  The novel goes into more detail about the strains of filoviruses and the various ways to distinguish them from certain bacterium look-alikes.  While the story remains frightening, it begins to explore more into political and economical reasons to consider when dealing with a level 4 hot agent.  It reminds me of a fiction book such as Harry Potter very much because of the subject matter.  At this point in the novel scientists inspect monkeys infected with ebola not knowing it which brings dramatic irony into context making the reading all the more exciting.  Cells are cut open and examined under an electron microscope with blades so sharp that they would not see resistance going through one's finger.  This is also an exciting book for me because I plan on going into the science field or at least use science in medicine as my career.  Something about being able to predict a reaction is interesting to me and I am always curious about things which I cannot explain.  Anyway, scientists in the novel try to pinpoint the source of ebola, but are unable to do so.  This may be because there are multiple sources, or because the virus is hard to uncover in its natural habitat.  For the virus to ultimately be effective, it doesn't have to win, it only has to not lose.  It is good at hiding in places it is comfortable with.

Blog 1 on The Hot Zone

For my outside reading for quarter four, I will be reading The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.  This is a nonfiction novel about the ebola viruses and its appearances in the history of the human race.  The novel as a whole is 411 pages long, but I only read pages 1-111 for this post.  So far, the novel has explored the origins of the filoviruses.  Filoviruses are a rare type of viruses that look like strings, instead of like spheres.  These viruses were discovered in the tropics and contain many diseases including strains of ebola and marburg disease.  The only reason a large epidemic has not occurred is that the outbreaks kill themselves out.  The real danger for humanity is if the filoviruses somehow turn airborne on a large scale.  This novel is one of the best pieces of writing that I have ever read.  It is the kind of book in which you don't want to stop reading.  The Hot Zone is also the most horrifying thing I have ever read.  It somehow brings reality to the utmost suffering and weakness to humanity.  That is one of the reasons that makes this book so great.  It is unnaturally, and yet realistically gruesome.  Humans naturally want to know more than they should be exposed to.  This book seems to bring up topics that are not for the weak minded.  I currently believe that I want to pursue a field in medicine for my career, which only seems to make the book more interesting.  Before I began reading this book, I did not have an appreciation for the power of nature.  Now I respect nature, but I also have a desire to work with it and to uncover its secrets.  For instance, all of the proteins in the ebola virus are not even known to man.

Post on Overcoming Odds

I read this article on overcoming odds.  It is about a climber who was guided to the summit of the tallest mountain in the world.  This man's name was Lincoln Hall.  When descending from the mountain, he was overcome by the low oxygen levels, and collapsed.  His guides tried to rescue him, but he was too heavy, and they almost killed themselves in the effort.  He was eventually found by an American climber.  He eventually completely recovered.  This is an example of the complex kindness of humanity.  This guy should have died, but he lived.  This is opposite to the case of Natasha Richardson.  She should have lived, but died of a fairly simple epidural hematoma.  She could have easily been saved.  Everyone wants national healthcare, but it will skip details.  The Americans will not accept the inability to sue for every mishap either.  I agree we do need healthcare improvements, but first of all we can't have a debt.  This is why I believe the glory days of the US of A are over.  McNamera, Melissa.  "Everest Survivor In 'Amazing Shape'."  CBS News.  30 May 2006.  22 March 2009.  < http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/30/world/main1665336.shtml?source=RSS&attr=World_1665336 >.