Shem Musoke, becomes infected with MARV while attempting to treat Monet, although he survives and samples of his blood are used in testing for the disease. After only two weeks Monet is brought to a hospital in Nairobi where he dies in the waiting room after slipping into a coma and bleeding out. From there the disease takes on a much more sinister form and is described by Preston as liquefying connective tissue, causing extensive hemorrhaging from “every orifice” and the general corruption of internal organs.
The effects of the disease are described in vivid detail from the early stages in which Monet begins to complain of headache, backache, “red eye” and vomiting.
The first segment of The Hot Zone is the story of a man Preston has given the pseudonym Charles Monet, a French expatriate who begins exhibiting symptoms of Marburg Disease (MARV) just a few days after visiting Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon in Kenya. in the 1980’s, and the fear that it could spread to the surrounding human population given the extreme infectivity of the disease. The book is divided into four sections: “The Shadow of Mount Elgon,” “The Monkey House,” “Smashdown,” and “Kitum Cave,” respectfully. The thriller element of The Hot Zone is provided by the true story of an outbreak of Ebola among primates near to Washington D.C. Biosafety Level 4 agents are the most dangerous, as they are highly infectious, have a high fatality rate, and there are no known prophylactics, treatments or cures. A Biosafety level is a set of containment precautions used by a laboratory in order to protect scientists from the diseases they are working with. Both the article and the full length book treat similar subjects, focusing on the history and emergence of several Biosafety Level 4 pathogens, including Ebola. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a non-fiction thriller, published in 1994, two years after his article “Crisis in the Hot Zone” appeared in The New Yorker.
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