Review Of The Hot Zone By Richard Preston

Writer and best-selling author, Richard Preston, in his non-fiction thriller, The Hot Zone:

A Terrifying True Story, tells about the origins and incidents involving major filoviruses, such as

Ebola and Marburg. Preston highlights multiple cases of the people who dealt and came with close contact to the viruses, from the possible contraction of Marburg by Monet, to Nurse Mayinga’s case of Ebola Zaire, to the biohazard operation at the Ebola-infested monkey house in Reston. Through this, he influences the public’s view on the viruses with an informative, but dramatized tone. Although the depictions strike convincing fear into many hearts, there are inaccuracies that blur the true reality of Ebola, especially with its symptoms and method of transmission.

During the moment that Charles Monet, Marburg progressing in his body, flies in the airplane to the hospital, he vomits in a sickness bag. “The red spots, which a few days before had started out as star like speckles, have expanded and merged into huge, spontaneous purple shadows: his whole head is turning black and blue. The muscles of his face droop. The connective tissue in his face is dissolving, and his face appears to hang from the underlying bone, as if the face is detaching itself from the skull.”

Then, Preston describes his vomit as “a speckled liquid of two colors, black and red, a stew of tarry granules mixed with fresh red arterial blood. It is hemorrhage, and it smells like a slaughterhouse.” His brain is also “liquefying” through tiny spots. The depiction of Monet’s body dissolving and liquefying, horrifying as they are, are not accurate to what Ebola and Marburg patients actually experience. They can experience vomiting as the virus progresses, but their organs retain their shape the whole