Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Hot Zone: Part 3
This part of the story was more gruesome. The Army killed all of the monkeys and took blood, liver, and other samples from a vast majority of them. After another worker got sick, the team became more worried and eager to find an answer. Nancy and Jerry, along with the rest of the team, worked countless hours until the job was done. The entertainment in this part was the monkey that escaped, and Jerry trying to catch it. After the house was cleaned out, another shipment of monkeys was delivered. About a month later, they all broke with Ebola and died. It was determined that Ebola Reston, the virus they've been trying to study and/or kill, is "kissing cousins" with Ebola Zaire, but doesn't kill humans like Zaire does. I think more research should carefully be done to discover why the Reston chain doesn't affect humans as much.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I totally agree! I don't think they know enough about the Reston chain to assume that it doesn't affect humans and just monkeys. You can never be too careful.
ReplyDeleteI agree. This section was rather gruesome. The fact that all of the monkeys had to be killed was saddening, especially when it turned out that humans weren't even harmed by the virus. More research definitely has to be done to discover just why humans weren't affected. The more answers we have, the better.
ReplyDeleteYour post makes me think about what was said in this section about dodging a bullet. People are acting like they have nothing to worry about Ebola Reston. They figure no humans died so it's not as important or deadly as Ebola Zaire or Marburg. But I think the two contaminations of Reston could just be the tip of the iceberg. They should definitely do a lot more research on it.
ReplyDelete