HOT ZONE by Richard Preston

Reviewed by Brandie Braden

The book I selected for my Ecology book report was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. This book is about the emergence of rare and lethal viruses from Africa and other tropical places in the world.

The first hot virus that is introduced is the Marburg virus. This virus is closely related to the Ebola virus and it was initially called stretched rabies. This virus was first recognized when a French expatriate came down with Marburg. He lived in Kenya and worked at a sugar factory, where his job was to take care of the water-pumping machinery. People who knew him said he was very affectionate with wild monkeys. He would often visit forested areas on the weekends after he worked hard in the sugar factory. He had a number of women friends that lived in the town of Eldoret. The people there were poor and lived in shacks made of boards and metal. When his Christmas vacation arrived he made plans to take a woman friend with him to camp on Mount Elgon. He and his friend drove up to Mount Elgon, which stradles the border between Uganda and Kenya and is not far from Sudan. On New Year’s morning he and his lady friend went into Kitum Cave. No one knows what in the cave carries the lethal virus, but after the trip, he soon became ill. On the seventh day after the visit to Kitum Cave—January 8, 1980—he had a headache and a throbbing pain behind his eyeballs. Pretty soon he became nauseated, spiked a fever, and began to vomit. He became strangely passive and his face lost all appearance of life and set itself into an expressionless mask. When he failed to show up for work, his colleagues became worried. When they went to his bungalow they decided that he needed to see a doctor. He got on a plane, and there his condition worsened. When he got to Nairobi Hospital, he had to sit in the waiting room to wait for a doctor. That’s when the human virus bomb exploded and he "crashed and bled out." He died of the lethal virus in the hospital.

The second virus that is introduced is the Ebola virus, and it has three different strains, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, and Ebola Reston. This virus is closely related to Marburg and all of them constitute the filovirus family. A filovirus is a family of viruses that comprises only Ebola and Marburg. They are also called thread viruses. The Ebola virus is named for the Ebola River, which is the headstream of the Mongala River, a tributary of the Congo, or Zaire, River. The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest type of Ebola virus—occurred in September 1976, when it erupted in 55 villages near the Ebola River. In reality, Ebola has not yet made a decisive breakthough into the human race. It has been emerging in microbreaks here and there in Africa. Ebola is a simple virus. It kills humans with swift efficiency and with a devastating range of effects. It is distantly related to measles, mumps, and rabies. Like measles, it triggers a rash all over the body. And often it resembles rabies—psychosis, and madness. Other of its effects eerily resemble a bad cold.

I loved this book. I felt fear as I read it. With all the things that humans are doing to mess up the tropical biosphere, sooner or later, as Preston suggests, the earth is going to mount an immune response against the human species. Whether its with HIV or Ebola, Nature will balance itself. I also felt suspense, excitement, paranoia, and a gross sense of what we, as a species, are doing to the world around us—we’re destroying it.

I really liked the character Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaxx in this book. I think that if I was her and I had to do experiments with a Biosafety Level 4 agent, I would have been so paranoid and clumsy. I think she was very composed and calm—much more composed and calm than I would have been. I would have been scared, and maybe she was scared but she knew how to handle it. I think that would have been the big difference between my behavior and her behavior. The fact that she could handle it. I wouldn’t have been able to, I don’t think.

This book had a large impact on me. Especially since the emergence of these new viruses are so interesting. I learned a lot about the different types of viruses. I think that if we as a whole—the human species, that is—would just stop destroying the tropical biosphere, then we wouldn’t be seeing such a wide variety of lethal viruses emerging from these places. These types of viruses lay and wait. If we had never went into their environment and messed up their ecosystems, then maybe humans wouldn’t be getting all these viruses. No one knows just where the virus lies and hides for a host, but I think that Kitum Cave plays a major role in the virus’s livelihood.

I think the smart thing that we should do is to just leave the tropical environment to be itself. We shouldn’t try to make highways out of rainforest area. If Preston was right, then the earth is showing an immune response against the human species. And if that’s true, then we’re in big trouble.