The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest type of Ebola virus—occurred in September 1976, when it erupted simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the headwaters of the Ebola River. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and killed nine out of ten people it infected. Ebola Zaire is the most feared agent at the Institute. The general feeling around USAMRIID has always been “Those people who work with Ebola are crazy.” To mess around with Ebola is an easy way to die. Better to work with something safer, such as anthrax.
Eugene Johnson, the civilian biohazard expert who was running the Ebola research program at the Institute, had a reputation for being a little bit wild. He is something of a legend to the handful of people in the world who really know about hot agents and how to handle them. He is one of the world’s leading Ebola hunters. Gene Johnson is a large man, not to say massive, with a broad, heavy face and loose-flying disheveled brown hair and a bushy brown beard and a gut that hangs over hisbelt, and glaring, deep eyes. If Gene Johnson were to put on a black leather jacket, he could pass for a roadie with the Grateful Dead. He does not look at all like a man who works for the Army. He has a reputation for being a top-notch field epidemiologist (a person who studies viral diseases in the wild), but for some reason he does not often get around to publishing his work. That explains his somewhat mysterious reputation. When people who know Johnson’s work talk about him, you hear things like “Gene Johnson did this, Gene Johnson did that,” and it all sounds clever and imaginative. He is a rather shy man, somewhat suspicious of people, deeply suspicious of viruses. I think I have never met someone who is more afraid of viruses than Gene Johnson, and what makes his fear impressive is the fact that it is a deep intellectual respect, rooted in knowledge. He spent years traveling across central Africa in search of the reservoirs of Ebola and Marburg viruses. He had virtually ransacked Africa looking for these life forms, but despite his searches he had never found them in their natural hiding places. No one knew where any of the filoviruses came from; no one knew where they lived in nature. The trail had petered out in the forests and savannas of central Africa. To find the hidden reservoir of Ebola was one of Johnson’s great ambitions.
No one around the Institute wanted to get involved with his Ebola project. Ebola, the slate wiper, did things to people that you did not wantto think about. The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits. They did not care to do research on Ebola because they did not want Ebola to do research on them. They didn’t know what kind of host the virus lived in—whether it was a fly or a bat or a tick or a spider or a scorpion or some kind of reptile, or an amphibian, such as a frog or a newt. Or maybe it lived in leopards or elephants. And they didn’t know exactly how the virus spread, how it jumped from host to host.
Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it. He would wake up in a cold sweat. His dreams went more or less the same way. He would be wearing his space suit while holding Ebola in his gloved hand, holding some kind of liquid tainted with Ebola. Suddenly the liquid would be running all over his glove, and then he would realize that his glove was full of pinholes, and the liquid was dribbling over his bare hand and running inside his space suit. He would come awake with a start, saying to himself, My God,
there’s been an exposure
. And then he would find himself in his bedroom, with his wife sleeping beside him.
In reality, Ebola had not yet made a decisive, irreversible breakthrough into the human race, but it seemed close to doing that. It had been emerging in microbreaks here and there in Africa. The worry was that a microbreak would
Eugene Johnson, the civilian biohazard expert who was running the Ebola research program at the Institute, had a reputation for being a little bit wild. He is something of a legend to the handful of people in the world who really know about hot agents and how to handle them. He is one of the world’s leading Ebola hunters. Gene Johnson is a large man, not to say massive, with a broad, heavy face and loose-flying disheveled brown hair and a bushy brown beard and a gut that hangs over hisbelt, and glaring, deep eyes. If Gene Johnson were to put on a black leather jacket, he could pass for a roadie with the Grateful Dead. He does not look at all like a man who works for the Army. He has a reputation for being a top-notch field epidemiologist (a person who studies viral diseases in the wild), but for some reason he does not often get around to publishing his work. That explains his somewhat mysterious reputation. When people who know Johnson’s work talk about him, you hear things like “Gene Johnson did this, Gene Johnson did that,” and it all sounds clever and imaginative. He is a rather shy man, somewhat suspicious of people, deeply suspicious of viruses. I think I have never met someone who is more afraid of viruses than Gene Johnson, and what makes his fear impressive is the fact that it is a deep intellectual respect, rooted in knowledge. He spent years traveling across central Africa in search of the reservoirs of Ebola and Marburg viruses. He had virtually ransacked Africa looking for these life forms, but despite his searches he had never found them in their natural hiding places. No one knew where any of the filoviruses came from; no one knew where they lived in nature. The trail had petered out in the forests and savannas of central Africa. To find the hidden reservoir of Ebola was one of Johnson’s great ambitions.
No one around the Institute wanted to get involved with his Ebola project. Ebola, the slate wiper, did things to people that you did not wantto think about. The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits. They did not care to do research on Ebola because they did not want Ebola to do research on them. They didn’t know what kind of host the virus lived in—whether it was a fly or a bat or a tick or a spider or a scorpion or some kind of reptile, or an amphibian, such as a frog or a newt. Or maybe it lived in leopards or elephants. And they didn’t know exactly how the virus spread, how it jumped from host to host.
Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it. He would wake up in a cold sweat. His dreams went more or less the same way. He would be wearing his space suit while holding Ebola in his gloved hand, holding some kind of liquid tainted with Ebola. Suddenly the liquid would be running all over his glove, and then he would realize that his glove was full of pinholes, and the liquid was dribbling over his bare hand and running inside his space suit. He would come awake with a start, saying to himself, My God,
there’s been an exposure
. And then he would find himself in his bedroom, with his wife sleeping beside him.
In reality, Ebola had not yet made a decisive, irreversible breakthrough into the human race, but it seemed close to doing that. It had been emerging in microbreaks here and there in Africa. The worry was that a microbreak would
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