Blog#2

How do people handle illness? There are many ways people go about or handle illnesses. Some examples are; they we deny that they have the illness. They may neglect themselves and just continue with their daily lives. There are many examples of people with the Ebola illness in different ways. Such as Charles Monet, he was the man who traveled to Kitum Cave and got infected with the Marburg strand of Ebola. In The Nurse had treated a nun who was infected with the disease so she knew the signs of the disease. Instead of admitting herself for the disease she just in a way denied that she even had it and went around Africa on trips potentially exposing others. She as well waited to long to seek any kind of medical help and crashed from the disease as well. A personal experience i have had in my life dealing with a serious illness was when I was in 5th grade. At this time i had caught the swine flu which at the time was a serious strain of flu. This virus made me feel nausious all the time while I had it. I also missed a whole week of school because of it and didn't leave the couch through most of it and had a bad sore throat. Those are ways people handle serious illness's as expressed in the book The Hot Virus along with in current everyday life.

Blog#1

There are many ethical dilemmas in the novel The Hot Zone.  One dilemma sticks out though and that’s the cruelty to the monkeys being experimented on. The monkeys that are being obtained are not animals already known to be infected by the disease. These monkeys were purposely injected with the Ebola virus by the Ebola team. The Ebola team’s purpose is to try and find a cure for the killer Ebola disease.  Although it does make sense why the Ebola team would choose to infect primates because of the huge similarity in DNA structure. Also if the team found a cure the disease they could save thousands of lives. The reason why the animal cruelty is a dilemma though is because these monkeys are practically being raised to either be the lucky recipient who discovers the cure to die while the scientist try to find a cure.  The scientist composing the Ebola team include Nancy Jaax as the team pathologist, Gene Johnson as the team leader, Tony Johnson as the supervising Lieutenant and a few others. Although this team’s goal is for the better of humanity the ignorance for the welfare of the animals could be seen as a major societal dilemma even the work they are trying to accomplish is for the better.