Overview Of The Hot Zone By Richard Preston

The most thought-provoking book I read this summer was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Not only is this book fast paced keeping you with the urge to read but it also focuses on real events leaving the reader to wonder why it is said that history repeats itself. I chose this book to focus on because of the close connection the story seemed to hold to recent events in history. The Ebola outbreak was the center of the media’s attention recently because of all the harm it caused in Africa and the fact that a virus could be so destructive, managing a large scale outbreak, is a massive threat to life as we know it. My reason for taking AP World History was really quite simple. I want to be able to learn about the history of the world so that I

While reading one immediately gets a sense of the harsh symptoms and gruesome death that someone with Marburg would have to endure. A picture becomes painted in the reader’s mind of the horrifying capabilities of the Marburg virus which has the potential to eradicate entire populations. The next few chapters are when the author describes other outbreaks of Ebola which had occurred before Monet had contracted the virus. While describing one of these outbreaks the author, Richard Preston concentrates on one particular story, the story of Nancy Jaax. Nancy was a scientist which had a very close call to almost infecting herself with the virus while examining a sample trying to find the cure for Marburg. Sometime after, Jaax was called to the reston facility in Virginia to examine some chimpanzees and discovers the animals are infected with the virus. The facility gets marked as a Hot Zone and swat teams go in to try to kill the monkeys. The point of killing the monkeys being, so the disease wont spread to humans. Total chaos is unleashed, one monkey almost biting and infecting a scientist. At the end of the book Preston takes a visit to Kitum, a cave where it is believed that two of the Marburg victims before becoming infected. However, the cave has never been pointed to as the ground zero of the virus. The reason for Preston’s visit is so he

One of the most surprising pieces of information that I learned while reading The Hot Zone was that human advancement contributes greatly to the spread of disease. In the final chapter of the book, Preston explains how the Kinshasa Highway, a highway that runs through the middle of Africa, aided and sped up the spread of the AIDS virus. This is a great example of how a highway destined to ease trade in Africa, turned into a human achievement spreading a terrible disease. Richard Preston also explains in great detail how diseases are spread which helped me have a great deal of new knowledge about disease, something I knew very little about. Not only does he explain the spread of Marburg, Ebola, and AIDS, but he also explains specific cases that apply to each of the