CHEYENNE — That old horror disease, Ebola, is back in the news, most unfortunately.
The highly infectious disease is causing outbreaks again in Africa, where it may have originated, and is causing illnesses.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, the chances of an outbreak in the U.S. are low right now.
Prevention, though, is on high alert, with warnings to travelers against visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Uganda, unless absolutely necessary.
The rules require people who have been to these African countries to be tested, and their airplanes diverted to land at specified airports in Washington, D.C., Houston, Texas and New York.
Given that there was nearly an outbreak of Ebola in this country years ago, these precautions are understandable.
In 1989, in a private, quarantined laboratory in Reston, Virginia, located near Washington, D.C., a large number of monkeys imported from the Philippines were dying from some unknown virus.
It was later identified as the “Ebola-Reston” virus.
That discovery formed the basis for the book about the Ebola crisis, written by Richard Preston.
It is part of his “dark biology series.”
And dark they are, at least in the “The Hot Zone.”
The first chapter is pretty hair-raising.
Preston gives a lengthy, detailed description of the symptoms suffered by the patient.
The patient was a real person who died.
We learn of the first symptoms - the headache, the fatigue, the nausea.
Then comes the “red eye,” the hemorrhaging from all orifices.
Stephen King, the famous horror writer, called that first chapter “one of the most horrifying things I’ve read in my whole life.”
That is saying a lot.
No wonder we readers were freaked out.
But there were also lots of critics, who deplored the details and claimed the author had presented an inflated picture of Ebola over the years.
Nevertheless, the image sticks with you if you read that first chapter, if not the entire book.
Because there is no cure or vaccine for this virus, it still is a particularly scary disease.
Maybe Preston wrote that chapter not just to sell books, but to warn us what could happen if we don’t stop the peril lurking over the hill.
One strain of the Ebola virus has a 90 percent death rate among humans.
The rest of his books deals with the work of scientists at Reston to keep the virus from spreading, and the continued study of the disease and how it is spread.
Among many other things, they found five forms of Ebola that are not harmful to humans.
One of the doctors who dealt with Ebola was William Close.
The renowned surgeon ended his career in 1977 with a rural practice in Big Piney, Wyoming.
In 1976, Close played an important role to control the first epidemic of the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Zaire.
“Ebola was a newly-discovered viral disease causing bleeding from multiple sites, particularly the gastrointestinal tract,” one online account said. “Medical resources were scarce and under threat themselves, with doctors and nurses dying in large numbers.”
One weekend, Close, father of the actress Glenn Close (he called her Glennie”) spoke at a program held at the Cheyenne library.
The room was filed with local medical doctors and other health care professionals who came to hear this acclaimed infectious disease specialist.
Among many other things, he told them how he and his colleagues saved the life of a native employee who was suffering from Ebola.
During a break I asked Close more about Ebola.
He kind of shrugged it off, saying those people, referring to the natives, had so many more problems greater than Ebola.
Like nutrition.
Their big problem was getting enough to eat.
Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
