Read And Review The Book "The Hot Zone" By Richard Preston

Book Review – The Hot Zone
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March 25, 2017
Introduction
In Richard Preston’s book – The Hot Zone – the dangers of the Ebola virus were greatly emphasized through the author’s delivery of the story. At the beginning of the book, he cited the horrific story of the death of Charles Monet, due to Ebola Sudan. After this, he also focused on other cases and discoveries about the different strains of Ebola (Zaire and Reston), all of which are highly contagious and have a high mortality rate (90%). Being based in real-life, the author of this paper believe that the book left a huge emotional and psychological impact on the part of its readers and showed a sense of urgency for greater scientific discoveries and caution with regards to natural events, such as viral outbreaks. More specifically, this book showed how crucial our understanding of these natural events and biological processes are, in order for us to prevent ‘near-extinction events’ such as the Black Plague, from happening again. To further understand this importance, the next chapter would be dedicated to a summary of the book, followed by a discussion of the main importance of studying biology (in relation to the story).
The Hot Zone Summary
As stated earlier, Richard Preston’s book – The Hot Zone – is based on a real-life story that happened on New Year’s Day back in the year 1980. It begins with the story of Charles Monet, who went and camped with her girlfriend at the Kitcum cave, in Mount Elgon, West Kenya. After their adventure, the couple boarded a flight and went home. However, just after a few days, Charles experienced a severe headache that lasted for days, thus forcing him to pay a visit to the doctor. After the consultation he was then advised to go to a better healthcare facility in Nairobi, nine days later after his trip. However, as he boarded his flight, witnesses stated that Charles was throwing up a mixture of blood and a black liquid. His condition even got worse as he arrived at the hospital, as he was reported to have lost his sense of balance (aka “equilibrioception”) and his spine became limp. Medical records also reported that he went into a state of shock during the same day, and even while he was unconscious he didn’t stop coughing out immense amounts of blood and black fluid. It was only later that the doctors found out that his guts (intestinal lining) started shedding while being excreted with huge amounts blood from his anus – a process of dying they call as “Crashing and Bleeding”. Due to this incident, medical and research facilities have become more interested in his case, and thus samples of his blood were sent to all the disease labs in the world. It was then found out that the disease which killed Monet, was due to the same strain of virus (Marburg strain) that have been wiping out tribes in Sudan. Because of this outbreak in Sudan, Gene Johnson went in and helped the sick and do research on the Marburg strain. Only to find out that, later on, it would be him who would discover the new type of virus which is later called as the Ebola Sudan. However as Gene tried to find a cure for Ebola ...