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Hot Zone Part 3

1983 September 26
Nancy Jaax
I had to wake up extremely early to be able to get to the USAMRIID and had to
also put on a spacesuit because it was a biosafety level 4. I had Tony Johnson going
with me to give me some backup and company. We entered the room together and
inspected the monkeys together. There were two banks of cages that were positioned
facing each other along opposite walls of the room. Together we replugged our hoses
and looked into the cages. The two isolated monkeys were the control monkeys and
they were not injected with Ebola so they were healthy. When we appeared in front of
them, the healthy monkeys went nuts because humans in space suits made them
nervous. Meanwhile, the other cages which contained the Ebola injected monkeys were
quiet as I had expected. They did not show signs of the usual monkey behaviour and
were not alert. They didnt even eat their morning biscuits. This was typical because
these monkeys were infected with Ebola Zaire . Gene Johnsons drug did not seem to
work on the monkeys because there was no signs of improvement. There even were
two monkeys that crashed and bled out. They did not show any facial expression, had
bloody noses, their eyes were half-open, glassy, and brilliant red, with dilated pupils. I
felt a wave of unease and was distressed by the sight of dead and suffering monkeys.
This was because I believed that as a veterinarian, it was my duty to heal animals and
relieve their suffering. I began the removal procedure as Johnson watched me carefully
because the infected monkey could wake up and a bite would be fatal. I inspected the
monkey first by looking through the bars, and saw that it was a large male which was
dead. I pinched the toe to check for eye movement and when there was none, I got the
go ahead from Johnson and took the monkey out. Together we carried the monkey to a
biohazard container which we took into a necropsy room. The animals cavity was a lake
of blood and there was a lot of internal hemorrhaging. We popped open the skull and
removed the brain, eyes, and spinal cord.

Space Suit

November 17, Friday


Thomas Geisbert
I had heard about the sick monkeys in Virginia and wanted to see if I could
identify any simian-fever-virus particles in it. I decided to take a look at the flasks of
monkey cells that were ripening with a light microscope. I started by putting on a
surgical scrub suit and a paper mask and went into the level 3 lab where the flasks were
being kept warm. There I met Joan Rhoderick, the technician who had started the
Reston culture; she was staring at the flask containing the cells that had been infected
with the simian-fever virus that came from Monkey O53. She explained to me that
something strange was going on in the flask. I looked through the eyepiece and saw
cells all over the place; they were tiny bags with each containing a nucleus. Living cells
stick to the bottom of a flask to form a living carpet but these cells had died and drifted
away, leaving holes in the carpet. All of them looked like this and were sick; something
was killing the cells. All of the cells looked swollen and contained granules that looked
like pepper. I saw reflections of light in the pepper, as if light was gleaming through
crystals. I could tell that these cells were extremely sick because the fluid was milky and
clouded with dead cells, cells that had exploded. We called in the boss, Peter Jahrling,
to take a look. He assumed that a wild bacteria such as pseudomonas wrecked the
flask and took a whiff. There was no smell.

November 28, Tuesday


Peter Jahrling
I was working steadily all afternoon in my own lab fiddling with flasks of virus
culture from the monkey house. I was trying to see if I could make the samples glow
under the ultraviolet light. If I was able to make the samples glow, then I knew that I had
the virus. I knew that blood serums would react to viruses so I needed to use blood
serums from human victims. I used the blood serums from 3 different people to test for
3 different viruses. The 3 people were Musoke (a test for Marburg), Boniface (a test for
Ebola Sudan), and Mayinga (a test for Ebola Zaire). Because it was a delicate test, it
took hours to complete. I first put droplets of cells from the monkey culture onto glass
slides, and let them dry, and treated them with chemicals. After that, I put drops of the
blood serum on the slides and if the target virus was present, it would glow. I had to see
which one glowed in total darkness because the glow would be faint, so I went into a
storage closet. I put the slides into the microscope and turned out the lights. I took a
look in the eyepiece and saw vast terrain. I wasnt looking for a faint glow but a bright
glow. To my astonishment, the test for Marburg did not glow, the test for Ebola Sudan
glowed weakly, but to my horror the test for Ebola Zaire glowed brightly. The monkeys
had died of the most deadly strain of Ebola.

December 4, Monday
Jerry Jaax
I put a Racal suit on and entered the airlock to the hotside. The place was
trashed and it looked as if humans had fled from there. The mission was to euthanize all
the monkeys. I saw a room that was full of monkeys and all of them were looking at me.
I fed some monkeys the biscuits because they were starving and I didnt want them to
suffer. I could see that the agent had gone through the whole building. Charlotte started
filling syringes with ketamine, the anesthetic. I took the syringe into the monkey room
and fitted it to the socket of a pole syringe. The sergeant fished his mop handle into a
cage and pinned a monkey. I then opened the cage and watched the monkey making
sure that it did not rush me. After that, I slid the pole syringe through the open door and
gave the monkey a dose of anesthetic. I took the syringe out and closed the door and
the monkeys began to go to sleep under anesthesia. When the monkeys were asleep
the fatal dose of T-61 would be injected through the heart and kill the monkey. This was
done until all the monkeys were dead. It was the hardest thing I had ever done as a
veterinarian.

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