=========BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE=========
[*****PNEWS CONFERENCES****]
/* Written by [EMAIL PROTECTED] in igc:health.reform */
/* ---------- "Ebola / The Hot Zone (Z magazine Bo" ---------- */
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: Ebola / The Hot Zone (Z magazine Book Review)
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Hot Zone
By Richard Preston
Random House, 1994
------------------------------------------------------------------
Review by Steve Eckardt
Z magazine (see bottom for more info), January 1995 pp. 55-57
------------------------------------------------------------------
Today viruses of unprecedented virulence are poised to wipe out all
human life.
That's the staggering message of this exquisitely-written,
exhaustively-researched work by Richard Preston.
Forget Stephen King or Clive Barker; forget the pseudo-scientific
doomsayings of the neo-Malthusian _Limits to Growth_ crowd -- this is
the real thing. _The Hot Zone_ is the most frightening work you have
ever read. For this is no crackpot sensationalism. Preston is an
award-winning science writer essentially just reporting facts -- and
his work has already passed muster at the fastidious _New Yorker_,
where a shorter version first appeared.
Truth is, there have already been dozens of super-pathogenic outbreaks
-- including several in the United States -- that were contained
essentially by freakish luck. Of course that's not to mention one of
the viruses -- the slow-acting HIV -- which, though early in its
spread, has yet become the world's second most cause of loss of life.
And it gets worse: there's not just a couple of viral mega-killers,
but dozens of them. That number's almost certain to grow, because the
conditions creating them are spreading like deforestation's daily
144,000 acres.
But the most compelling part is missing from this book, for even while
Preston sounds the tocsin, he is yet constrained by traditional
politics, and so never delivers the final -- and worst -- part of the
news.
And that information is why the critically-important emergence of
super-pathogens, along with the real causes of HIV and its relatives,
has virtually escaped public notice.
Instead, an uninformed public is transfixed by AIDS -- itself
unexplained -- and is driven to seek answers outside the natural
sphere. Rightists pose the vengeful Sword of God while leftists blame
allegedly escaped U.S. germ warfare agents.
But while conspiracy theories, scapegoats, and secret "cures" abound
-- straws grasped by those who can neither handle nor explain what is
happening in the world -- HIV deaths mount. (Preston cites the
thinking of one leading epidemiologist, "that the death toll, in the
end, could hit hundreds of millions-- and that [that] possibility had
not sunk in with the general public.") And at the same time, worse--
much worse-- organisms teeter on the edge of an international
pathogenic Hiroshima.
Preston's and others' evidence suggest that the causes of both HIV and
its more threatening coursins do indeed lie outside the realm of the
normal ebb and flow of human pathogens, though hardly in the
supernatural sphere. These superpathogens are not like especially
nasty flus. These are organisms that the epidemiologists call "slate
wipers" in regards to human life. They have mortality rates of up to
90 percent -- and due to human social interdependence, 40 percent is
considered sufficient for virtual extermination.
Take Ebola, for instance, perhaps the best-known of new, near-
Andromeda Strain organisms. Here is an extremely aggressive virus
that literally rots the body internally; necrotic discharges stream
from every orifice, including the eyeballs and nipples. The walking
dead spew putrefaction -- each drop contagious. And like all
super-virulent organisms, it acts quickly to exterminate the forces
opposing it: externally, the medical personnel; internally, the body's
immune system.
In fact Preston explains that Ebola is so virulent that a 1976
outbreak-- a simultaneous emergence in 55 Zairan villages -- was
probably prevented from international "slate-wiping" only by killing
virtually every local-- and doing it quickly. It wasn't the last
minute order to seal the area -- only one person made it out anyway --
or the imminent halting of all air traffic from Zaire. Nor was it
medical measures -- there are none.
Radical social health measures may have helped, but they took the form
of villagers isolating victims in single huts, pushing food and water
to their door with long sticks, and then setting fire to the whole
thing when signs of life appeared to cease inside. Meanwhile
moon-suited medical personnel rounded up every person who came in
contact with the lone refugee, put them in extreme isolation, and
"nuked" the spattered facility in which she perished.
All this would just be profoundly disturbing news, like discovery of a
comet heading toward Earth, except for Preston's suddenly obvious --
and chilling -- explanation of Ebola's and the other new viruses'
virulence.
Ordinarily, diseases and their hosts co-evolve over eons, achieving a
certain "healthy" (if occasionally fatal) balance. In other words,
being wildly and quickly lethal is against the pathogen's interest
since it eliminates the host on which it depends.
For example, if cold viruses were so virulent that they quickly choked
off breathing, soon there'd be neither humans nor colds. Or if
mosquitoes' bites were like cobras', both the little bloodsuckers and
their prey would not be long for this world.
Unfortunately this exquisite balance -- arrived at over a period of
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years -- no longer applies
if
a pathogen suddenly jumps from preying on its one co-evolving host
species to an entirely new one.
Pathogens that do this -- jump species -- are referred to as
"zoonotic"
organisms. Such a pathogen, suddenly introduced to a species that is
bereft of defenses, poses spectacular dangers. That explains why the
new viruses [that] are so virulent and so lethal -- Ebola, HIV et al
--
are all zoonotic organisms. They operate outside the framework of
eons of evolution against a defenseless host -- us.
But what is the source of these pathogens? And why are they emerging
now? Here lies the answer that makes such sudden -- and frightening
--
sense. Ebola, Lassa, Rift Valley, Chikungunya, Kyasanur Forest,
O'nyong-nynong, Simliki, HIV (or, if the naming pattern were followed,
Kinshasa) are all products of the tropical rain forest or adjoining
savanna.
As Preston puts it, "when an ecosystem suffers degradation, many
species die out and a few survivor-species have a population
explosion. Viruses in a damaged ecosystem come under extreme
selective pressure. Viruses are adaptable: they react to change and
can mutate fast, and they can jump among species of hosts. As people
enter the forest and clear it, viruses come out, carried in their
survivor-hosts -- rodents, insects, soft ticks -- and the viruses meet
Homo Sapiens."
Thus "the emergence of AIDS [and its cousins] appear to be a natural
consequence of the ruin of the tropical biosphere. Unknown viruses
are coming out of the equatorial wildernesses of the earth... as a
result of the destruction of tropical habitats.... I tend to think of
rats leaving a ship." (Oct. 26, 1992 _New Yorker_)
Indeed, according to the August 6, 1993 _Science_, "four years ago, at
a landmark meeting on emerging viruses, it became clear that there was
growing evidence that pointed to... changing environments as the main
cause of emerging infectious diseases. " This evidence "made such an
impression on the field that by 1992 a panel of infectious disease
experts produced a report for the Institute of Medicine stating that
`environmental changes probably account for most emerging disease'."
But Preston's characterization of this as "the revenge of the rain
forest" -- however on the mark-- does not go far enough. Massive
environmental destruction -- earlier ravages of the tropics, for
instance, or the ruination of the pre-Conquest North American
ecosystem -- is not a recent phenomenon. Nor does the argument that
"we've created new pathways for these viruses to travel rapidly from
place to place" (virologist Stephen Morse, quoted in _Science_, ibid.)
suffice. Massive population influxes both in and out of the rain
forest are not truly recent either-- take the 16th and 17th century
kidnappings of over 40 million Africans for slavery, for instance.
What is a more recent phenomenon -- one absent from The Hot Zone -- is
the intensification of exploitative pressure on the Third World by the
neo-imperialist powers.
First World-imposed austerity, privatization, soaring prices for
finished goods, and plummeting prices for raw materials have created
spectacularly grim conditions of starvation, ruination, and
internecine butchery in the Third World. "We are the living dead,"
spoke the Mayan survivors of southern Mexico as they launched their
Zapatista rebellion earlier this year. Things are likewise in
Africa -- the only continent in which the GNP has actually fallen in
the last ten years.
This economic war (what the Zapatistas called "the death sentence")
has as its immediate medical consequences the elimination of health
services and the weakening of human immune systems. Victims of
malnutrition, of unchecked "normal" diseases, of broken and desperate
communities are inviting targets for the viral "rats" fleeing the
ruins of the rain forest.
So while a healthy male's risk of HIV infection from unprotected
intercourse with a positive female may be one in ten thousand, it's
over 1,000 times greater for a poorly nourished male with untreated
syphilis.
Were Preston's report on the super-pathogens' emergence not
jaw-dropping enough, adding the missing political element makes the
situation all the more compelling: this is not a glitch.
Structurally-driven imperial ravages of Third World living standards
lie behind the zoonotic micro-monsters.
But it's even more fiendishly exquisite than that. Environmental
devastation combined with extreme human oppression may still not be
sufficient conditions for the emergence of potentially-apocalyptic
zoonotic organisms. After all, the European Conquest of the Americas
accomplished that without producing a single Andromeda Strain (perhaps
little comfort to the nearly 90 percent of the Mayan population that
fell victim to smallpox).
It seems that the appearance of "slate wipers" requires a long,
intricate line-up of conditions to occur, like tumblers on a complex
lock. (Of course if if didn't, there'd be no one left.) Something
*else* is going on. The last click! is the work of scientists
summarized by Jay Gould in March 15, 1993 _Nation_: according to Drs.
Andrei Sakharov and Ernest Sternglass the most widespread -- and
wildly underestimated -- effect of low-level radiation is significant
weakening of the human immune system. In fact, "Effects of the
[far-distant] Chernobyl accident were even apparent in small but
statistically significant excess mortality in the United States in May
1986."
In short, low-level radiation has "lethal effects on the human immune
system."
And the fact is that atmospheric radiation from bomb tests,
bomb-building, and nuclear power vector into the human population
almost entirely through rain.
And where is the greatest amount of this? You guessed it: in the very
rain forests that are birthing -- surprise! -- the zoonotic slate
wipers.
Super-pathogens may be the agents, but the profile -- nuclear weapons,
nuclear power, environmental pillage, Third World oppression, and
austerity -- gives us the face of the real killer: the existing
international social order. Capitalism has become like the classic
Ebola-infected zombie, spewing lethal contagion.
That's why there won't be a sudden turn-around or a technological
silver bullet. Only a fundamental social and economic re-structuring
of the world has a prayer of preserving human life on earth -- and
it's already very, very late. For as Preston says, "the presence of
international airports puts every virus on earth within a day's flying
time..." And if the prospect of human extermination doesn't pose the
need for revolutionary change, what does?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Steve Eckardt is a Chicago-based free-lance writer. He thanks Stacy
Gordon for her assistance in preparing this article.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Transcribed by Harel Barzilai and Eric Schissel
For more information about Z magazine, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------------------------------------------
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
***** PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS ******
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
PNEWS CONFERENCES provide "radical" alternative views with an
emphasis on justice, humanitarian positions, protests,
boycott alerts, activism information, etc.
****************
To subscribe, send request to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
--Boundary (ID HVwJp0HphrAcajejpTCgcQ)
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 10:30:17 EST
Importance: normal
A1-type: DOCUMENT
RFC-822-headers:
EPIC66.DEP.STATE.FL.US
(PMDF V4.3-7 #7204) id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
Fri,
Fri,
--Boundary (ID HVwJp0HphrAcajejpTCgcQ)--
--Boundary (ID qWFy2Vt7I2u2cbdyfJ1bpA)--
--Boundary (ID i+tvcwLLRTkOP1JWaCBa3Q)--
=========END FORWARDED MESSAGE=========
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Carol Meeds
Jupiter, FL
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue May 23 06:20:43 1995
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 08:22:43 -0400
From: "Thomas Ulman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Account
Please, unsubscribe my account from the list.
Thank You,
