Ebola Reston - In October 1989, the community of Reston, Virginia went about their daily lives not realizing that a serious crisis was developing right in their back yards that would not be entirely resolved until March 1990. It was a serious calamity that could have wiped out the entire population. This dire emergency was described twenty years ago by Richard Preston in his non-fiction book, “The Hot Zone.” The “hot zone” refers to an “area that contains lethal, infectious organisms” also dubbed “hot agent,” an “extremely lethal virus, potentially airborne.” The people in the book are real, two victims’ names have been changed, and the narrative and dialog were masterfully reconstructed from interviews and memories of those who participated in the crises. Hazelton Research Products, a division of Corning, Inc. was importing and selling lab animals. On October 4, 1989, the monkey house called Reston Primate Quarantine Unit located not far from Leesburg Pike, received a shipment of one hundred crab-eating monkeys (a type of macaque) from the Philippines, caught on the island of Mindanao. Two of the monkeys were dead in their shipping crates. By first of November, 29 of the monkeys were dead, most of them in Room F. The heating and air system had failed so it was assumed the deaths had occurred from ambient conditions. Each night more macaques died. By November 16, a tentative diagnosis was given “simian hemorrhagic fever.” Thomas Geisbert, an intern at the Institute discovered under his electron microscope the dreaded Ebola virus. Dr. Jahrling tested the virus cultures from the macaques against three known blood serums:.......................
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:05:11 +0000
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