Sample essay topic, essay writing: The Hot Zone - 944 words
AUTHOR: Richard Preston PUBLISHER: RandomHouse DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1994 Setting: Thesetting g takes place in two major places. Reston Marylandwhich is a suburb of Washington DC. and the second majorarea is in Kenya Africa. The story takes place in the 1980's. Main Characters: Since this story is a true story there is noone character that is a main character. The author does notcreate the story around any one main character so I'll just listevery character I can remember from the book.
1. CharlesMonet: He was the first host to the deadly ebola virusbreakout in Africa. He was 56 years old and was kind of aloner according to the authors interviews with people. 2. Dr. Mosoke: He was Charles Monets doctor when Charlescrashed and bled out which means when the host suddenlystarts bleeding infectious blood out of every orifice in thebody
3. Nancy Jaax: She was a veterinary pathologist at amilitary fort in Maryland. 4. Jerry Jaax: He was aveterinarian and husband to Nancy Jaax. 5.
Peter Jahrling:He was a disease expert at Fort Detrick 6. Gene Johnson:He was in charge of the Reston operation. He also was thediscoverer of Ebola Sudan. 7. Nun: The Nun's name wasunknown but she had the very first recorded case of EbolaZaire which is the most dangerous of the three strains. Summary: This is a true story. On New Year's Day 1980 aman named Charles Monet went on a trip with a girl friendof his up to Mnt.
Elgon in West Kenya. They spent the nightthere and went to a large cave there called Kitcum cave. After his trip to Kitcum cave he went home and three dayslater had a huge headache that wouldn't go away. That is thefirst symptom of this deadly disease. A few days later hewent to the doctors and they told him he should go to abigger hospital in Nairobi. Charles caught a flight to Nairobian the ninth day after his visit to kitcum cave.
All through theflight to Nairobi he was throwing up blood mixed with ablack liquid. When he got to the hospital he sat down andwaited to be served. Then his spine went limp and nervelessand he lost all sense of balance. he started going into shock. He then started throwing up an incredible amount of bloodfrom his stomach and spilt it on to the floor. The people whowere there said the only sound was the choking in his throatfrom his constant vomiting while he is unconscious.
Thencame the sound of bed sheets being torn in half which is thesound of his bowels opening up and venting blood from theanus. The blood is mixed with intestinal lining. His gut issloughed. The linings of his intestines come off and werebeing expelled from his body along with huge amounts ofblood. This dying process which happens to nine out of tenpeople who come in contact with the deadly disease iscalled crashing and bleeding.
Samples of his blood wereflown to all the major disease labs in the world. The diseasewas a Marburg Strain. In Sudan the same types of deathswere wiping out whole tribes. So Gene Johnson flew overthere and worked with sick members of the tribes to try andfind a cure. This strain of Marburg was called Ebola Sudanfor were it was found.
Later in Zaire there was an out postof missionaries who would give vaccine shots and penicillinto local tribes. One of the nuns there became sick with asimilar disease. She died and her blood was sent to diseaselabs all over the world. The strain was called Ebola Zairesince it was discovered in Zaire. In Reston Maryland therewas a monkey house that would ship monkeys all over theUS.
To labs for medical experiments. Suddenly all themonkeys started dying in one room. Tom Jahrling from fortDetrick came down and took a look at the monkeys andtook some samples. He took back and he and TomGeisbert looked at it and thought it was just a small monkeyvirus and try smelled it which is a way to tell what somethingwas. They couldn't tell what it was so they looked at it undera electron microscope and it looked allot like Marburg. They were scared because they had smelled the container ofthe marburg. They didn't tell anyone that they had beenexposed. The Military and the C. D.C.
(Center for DiseaseControl) sealed off the whole building and Nancy Jaax andJerry Jaax led squads of people inside the building wearingspace suits. Two people while working inside the buildingwere cut and their space suits were torn which means theywere exposed to the virus. They found out that the virus theywere working with was a close relative to Ebola Zaire. Theykilled all the monkeys in the building and locks their corpsesup because they were predicting that if the virus got out itwould total the human population. It would be like anotherBlack Plague, but the Black Plague only killed 50% of thoseinfected while this killed 90%. They put a special chemical inthe building and let it sit four three days.
After the tree daysnothing was alive in the entire building not even a tinymicroscopic virus could live. But four people had beenexposed to the virus and surprisingly they all lived they laterrealized that the virus must have mutated so it would notharm humans but if it mutated again and could effect humansit would be devastating. This new virus was called EbolaReston. OPINION: I thought the book was really scary. Itwas scary to see that there are diseases that couldcompletely wipe us out and that we got really lucky atReston.
I thought the book was also very educating. From ascale of one to ten I give it a ten because the author usesgreat detail. for instance when the author tells the effects ofthe disease.
Research paper and essay writing, free essay topics, sample works The Hot Zone
The Hot Zone
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