The Hot Zone

by Richard Preston
Hennepin County Library paperback 316 pages
genre: non-fiction, science, deadly viruses

How interesting! I'm glad I got this after talking to Pam Silverain about it. Written in 1994, Preston covers the Marburg virus, then three different forms of Ebola. He makes science sound like science fiction!

Pages 79-82 describing what Ebola Zaire did to Sister M.E. is horrific! It is so graphic that it reads like a passage from a zombie book. To think of people actually being this sick . . . it's a wonder anyone can survive it. The mortality rate is 90% (or was, at the time this book was written).

The part where the military is moving in on the monkey house in Reston, VA kind of bothered me. I understand about not wanting to cause a panic (and the media is fantastic at whipping people into frenzies), but it seemed a bit over-the-top. It was also interesting to read about the different approaches taken by the CDC and the level 4 military virus-fighters.

Nancy Jaax choosing to work instead of going to see her father on his death bed . . . I think she had her priorities messed up. That and leaving her children on auto-pilot. When your job is more important than the people in your life, it's time to re-think your job.

Page 310 - interesting to think of viruses like AIDS or Ebola as nature's corrective system for overpopulation by humans. Not that I agree, but it's an interesting hypothesis. Ultimately, I found the first half of this book to be quite gripping and the second half to be over-blown and ultimately a let-down. (I am glad, though, that there wasn't a major outbreak of a deadly virus!)