the hot zone essays

the hot zone essays "Lassa is a Level 4 virus from West Africa, and it was one of Peter Jahrling's favorite life forms-he thought it was fascinating and beautiful, in certain ways. He had held in his gloved hands virtually every hot agent known, except for Ebola and Marburg. When people asked him why he didn't work with them, he replied, "I don't particularly feel like dying." Richard Preston traces the known paths of Ebola and Marburg in The Hot Zone. He tells of their discovery, effects, and the outbreaks. Level 4 scientists for the Army, the CDC, and several civilian scientists track down the viruses in order to conduct tests and find the secret hiding place of the viruses. The height of the story occurs when Ebola Zaire is discovered in a monkey house near Washington, D.C. and the Army has to decontaminate the entire facility. Luckily, the airborne strain only affected monkeys and didn't infect humans. Preston concludes with his own trip to Africa to look at a possible reservoir of the viruses. Preston's style is sensational journalism. He uses graphic detail when describing the effects of the viruses to make it sensational. Doctors would be brief and scientific in their reports on the symptoms. Preston description's are not brief and are graphic. " His face lost all appearance of life and set itself into and expressionless make...the eyeballs themselves seemed almost frozen in their sockets, and they turned bright red. He began to look like a zombie...and then you see that his lips are smeared with something slippery and red, mixed with black specks, as if he has been chewing coffee grounds. .... He is going into shock. He leans over, head on his knees, and brings up an incredible quantity of blood from his stomach and spills it onto the floor with a gasping groan. The only sound is a choking in his throat as he continues to vomit while unconscious. Then comes a sound like a bedsheet being ...