Thursday, August 23, 2012
The Hot Zone: Part 4
Part four of The Hot Zone was a little bit of a disappointment. I found it really annoying how it wasn't made clear if the author was the speaker in this part. The ending was also a little bit of a cliff hanger because we never found out if it was officially one of the sources of the virus. This book did not tell us what the American researchers found in the cave or what prompted them to go there. Especially since they believed that the virus might have initially emerged from rainforests in the Philippines. This section of The Hot Zone also seemed to pass really fast. Most of it was about the voyage that the speaker took getting to the cave. It was interesting to learn that part of the reason the HIV virus traveled so fast had to do with the road/highway getting paved. Or how in 10 short years poachers could obliterate the elephant and lion populations of the region. What was the author/speaker looking for when he went into the cave? If the cave is potentially inhabited with a deadly virus then why can people still go in there? What are officials doing about the deforestation affecting the area? Is deforestation indirectly causing humans to contract deadly viruses?
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i agree part four of the hot zone was a dissapointment and it did leave you with some unanswered questions.
ReplyDeleteThe person who went into Kitum Cave in part four was definitely Richard Preston. He said 'we' and 'I' and 'me'. Richard Preston seemed to have gone into the cave just to look around at the place he learned so much about. He said he wasn't taking samples and he wasn't looking for anything extensive research. I agree that it stinks that there are so many unanswered questions but it's non-fiction. Besides, I don't think the purpose of this book was to inform us about the story of the filoviruses. I think this book shows more about humans than it does about the filoviruses.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, *any extensive research
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