THIS IS 鈥淭he most terrifying true story you will ever read鈥�: a boiling
crimson sludge of thread viruses forms the raised letters of its title, The
Hot Zone. What the publisher is trying to sell in its hundreds of thousands,
then, is not science but a package of violent sensations, a Jurassic Park with
germs instead of dinosaurs and an added attraction: truth.
The factual basis of the book is nevertheless disquieting. HIV is a
鈥淏iosafety Level 2 agent鈥� because it is lethal but relatively difficult to
catch. The stars of The Hot Zone are two viruses named Ebola and Marburg for
the places where they were first detected, classified as 鈥淏iosafety Level 4鈥�
because they are more lethal than HIV but also highly contagious. This is the
story of their recent escape from the heart of the African rainforest to big
centres of human population via modern roads and planes. As Richard Preston
would have it, 鈥淎 hot virus from the rain forest lives within a 24-hour plane
flight of every city on earth.鈥�
Ebola and Marburg are filoviruses or thread viruses. They are thought to be
very ancient, but their potential to kill large numbers of people is new, as
more and more humans encroach on the rainforest. There are well-established
cases in which Ebola and Marburg were transmitted from captive monkeys to
humans. In one of the book鈥檚 alarmingly rare pauses for thought, Preston
points out that these viruses have 鈥渏umped species鈥� from monkeys to humans at
precisely the time when human activity is threatening the habitat and survival
of other primates.
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Preston adapts techniques gleaned from films and novels to chronicle
particular escapes by Marburg and Ebola, telling his story through the
supposed stream of consciousness of real-life characters he has questioned. He
does this with excessively high hopes: 鈥淚f you ask a person `What were you
thinking?鈥� you may get an answer that is more revealing of the human condition
than any鈥� novelist could invent. I try to see through people鈥檚 faces into
their minds鈥nd what I find there is beyond imagining.鈥� This is a red rag to
a novelist, but let that pass. What really emerges from this passage is
Preston鈥檚 desire to go where none have gone before him, 鈥渢hrough people鈥檚
faces鈥�, 鈥渂eyond imagining鈥�, and finally 鈥� by way of a huge pile of suppurating
technicolour flesh 鈥� right over the top.
His first case history gives the flavour of the rest. Charles Monet, a
French worker with a sugar company in Kenya, falls mysteriously ill after a
brush with rock crystals 鈥渟harp as hypodermic syringes鈥�. He gets a headache,
then a fever; his face sets into an expressionless mask, his eyeballs turn
bright red, the skin of his face turns yellow with red flecks; he is flown in
a state of galloping decomposition on a crowded Kenya Airways commuter plane
to Nairobi, virtually brain dead, his 鈥渓iver, kidneys, lungs, hands, feet and
head jammed with blood clots鈥�, spewing up black vomit and bleeding copiously
from both nostrils 鈥� not the passenger you hope will be sitting next to you on
a flight. By the time he lands Monet 鈥渉as been transformed into a human virus
bomb鈥� which finally explodes 鈥渨ith a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half鈥�
in the hospital waiting room. All round him the pool of blood spreads: 鈥渢he
agent is coming out of every orifice and is trying to find a new host鈥�.
You have been warned. This is not for the faint-hearted. And Preston goes
on to reveal that Marburg, the virus that devoured Monet, is merely the
鈥済entle sister鈥� of Ebola, the 鈥渉ot mother鈥� thread virus (what has he against
sisters and mothers?).
In 1989, Ebola travelled to Reston, Virginia, 鈥渁 stone鈥檚 throw from the
White House鈥�, in a consignment of a hundred crab-eating monkeys from the
Philippines, imported by Hazelton Research Products. Around 16 000 wild
monkeys are imported to the US annually, Preston does not spell out what for,
but presumably they are used for medical or pharmaceutical research. Far from
the mangrove swamps where they feasted on crabs, they are kept one to a cage
in steel-doored, artificially lit concrete rooms. The building鈥檚 thermostat
has failed, it鈥檚 more than 90 degrees in there, and it stinks.
Two of the crab-eaters arrive dead; soon dozens are dying, and it becomes
clear they are harbouring a highly contagious virus. The US Army diagnoses
Ebola, and once humans begin to fall sick we are rushing towards 鈥淪mashdown鈥�,
as Preston鈥檚 chapter heading puts it 鈥� the desperate, epic extermination of
all five hundred monkeys in the building by space-suited members of the US
Army, wielding hypodermics on long poles. After three long, hot days the
monkeys have all been cornered and killed.
Given the situation, only someone totally lacking in moral imagination
could look at the shit the terrified macaques have smeared on the walls and
make the only negative character-judgement of the book: 鈥淚t was a message to
the human race that came out of something crooked and mocking in the primate
soul.鈥� One would think the human race had given a fairly clear message to the
monkeys, too. The final irony is that this version of Ebola turned out not to
be lethal in humans.
This book makes one want to substitute another word for the 鈥渉umanity鈥� we
use so self-approvingly. 鈥淎nimality鈥� might do no worse. Despite Preston鈥檚
sporadic rushes of poetry to the head 鈥� 鈥渁 sourness of dead leaves鈥� and so
forth 鈥� he depicts human suffering as shallowly as he does animals鈥�, lapsing
frequently into military slang or computerese: 鈥淭he virus absolutely nuked the
monkeys. 鈥淢onet has crashed and is bleeding out.鈥�
There is a sense that for preston, physical bodies have become otiose and
disgusting 鈥� interesting in view of a prevalent millennial sense that the
human race might be moving beyond its desk-bound physicality and into some
kind of global brain. Ariimals have nowhere else to go. Once we have destroyed
their habitats and taken them away from the wreckage, they are literally dead
meat, as Preston tells us in language that is unintentionally illuminating.
鈥淭here were 500 monkeys inside that building. That was about three tons of
monkey-meat, a biological nuclear reactor having a core meltdown.鈥�
How frightened should we be of Ebola and Marburg? My feeling is that The
Hot Zone tries far too hard to scare us, as if terror and cruelty are the only
things that can touch us, as if only black horror can come out of Africa, as
if there is no past or future but only a breakneck present. I do not believe
Mr Preston. All the same, if we don鈥檛 ask more questions about what is going
on in the monkey-house, the last laugh may be on human beings.