A disease can be defined as “an abnormal condition in which an organism's normal bodily functions are interrupted, causing the feeling of pain and weakness which are usually associated with symptoms and signs” (Biology-online.org). People can be affected by disease directly or indirectly in their lifetime. Individuals in an audience can relate to the fear and trepidation that Hollywood can produce in a movie that presents the pain, suffering and sadness of a life threatening sickness. However, sometimes the facts get distorted by the producers and the diseases seen on the big screen may not the same as those in real life. The movie, which is based around the fictional Motaba Virus which is modelled upon the terrifying Ebola Virus of West Africa. The movie Outbreak has questionable scientific worth. The signs and symptoms and the facts portrayed …show more content…
Viruses, unlike bacteria, are not cells; they are parasitic invaders and consist of a fragment of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, inside a protective protein coating. (Science dimensions 4) Viruses can only reproduce inside host cells. Once inside, they take over the control of the cell and program it to make even more virus particles. When the number of virus particles reaches its maximum, the cell breaks apart, releasing the virus and allowing it to attack other cells. Sometimes Viruses can remain inactive for long periods of time following the invasion of cells. An example of this is the common herpes simplex virus, responsible for cold sores. In this disease the virus will be remain dormant, awaiting the right conditions for rapid reproduction and re-appearance, where the cold sores come and go. Viruses can be very difficult to treat because they are not cells. They are not stopped by common antibiotics and the infected person will therefore have to wait until their body uses its own methods of defence to terminate the
Viruses are capsules with genetic material inside. They are very tiny, much smaller than bacteria. Viruses cause familiar infectious diseases such as the common cold, flu and warts. They also cause severe illnesses such as HIV/AIDS,
Nancy Jaax almost became infected when she tore her space suit while performing an autopsy on an infected monkey. Luckily she didn’t, but danger can happen around any corner. Even though Doctors new a lot about Ebola it was still very scary and unpredictable to work on. The beginning of the book gives the reader a very description of what Ebola is and does to its unlucky victims. “Ebola the slate wiper, did things to people that you do not want to think about.
Influenza was a deadly virus that killed millions of people around the world back in 1918. The virus of influenza has eight genes with no fix structure, and the segment structure can change the virus fragmentation endlessly. The virus is independent and can replicate rapidly once it gets into your lungs which can the air pathway and the infected person would drown in their own body. People with the virus can spread it by coughing, sneezing, and sometimes people might touch a surface which has the virus on it and touch their mouth or nose without properly washing it. The virus has eight genes.
The argument that all viruses are deadly is incorrect. In the Hot Zone, Preston explained how Ebola and Marburg caused an epidemic that killed over hundreds of people and animals. In the novel, Preston also mentions smallpox and malaria. Being diseases, there are cures for all of them which overtime will eventually prove to be not deadly. Although hundreds of lives were lost against the virus, there came a cure later on.
The first part of the book included the first known cases of Marburg disease. The Marburg disease became available in Marburg, Germany in 1967. Also, the well-known stories of Yu G. who was the first person to die from Ebola Sudan in 1976, and Mayinga N., a nurse who became infected with Ebola Zaire after helping treat a patient who dies of the disease. At first, Mayinga was in denial about her abnormal symptoms and spent two days in the city around thousands of civilians exposing her infection to everyone around her before going to the hospital, she ended up dying just like Monet. Another story consisted of a Lieutenant Colonel, Nancy Jaax.
200 years ago Edgar Allen Poe wrote the story “ The Masque of the Red Death”, comparing both the red death, and Ebola from what I read Poe was not talking about Ebola in the story. For instance the symptoms of both diseases have common affects on people when they come in contact with disease. Poe wrote the story 200 years ago, at Prince Prospero , but Ebola has only been around for a short period of time. For example both infections scared everyone, and the people isolated themselves from the sick. Based on what I read Poe was not talking about Ebola in the story.
They require end-user activation and can stay dormant for a period of time before activating. A less complex virus may install itself after running the first line of code on an executable. Once it is activated, it will look for other files in order to multiply, such that all the files will become infected. Depending on the virus, there are harmless as the ones displaying a picture on the screen or can be destructive as those that modify and delete files on the hard drive. Very complex viruses cannot be detected because they are programmed to
The red death could not be Ebola because the time period is wrong. Ebola is a modern day disease that was first discovered in 1976. The only thing that does not help against the time period is that he never wrote in what the time period was. It could have been a million years ago, or it could have been a thousand years in the future. One can never be sure what he was thinking of,but in
In the beginning, the disease did not severely harm the infected; it just brought them closer together. The infected did not injure anyone nor did they speak. Towards the end of the story is when the disease took its toll on the infected and turned them into monsters. The infected patients started attacking their loved ones and friends and ended up running the uninfected people out of the country. The La Negura disease made the infected patients the monster of story turning them into zombies and causing terror in Port Au Prince.
Judeah Auguste University of Alaska Anchorage The Doctors Plague, Sherwin B. Nuland Kraft The Doctors Plague depicts the story of the lifeline of Ignac Semmelweis, a physician in the First Division at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus hospital in Vienna and his discovery of childbed fever. Nuland opens the medical-scientific novel with a fictional story of a young nameless girl who is inching closer to her birth date. From her friend, she learns there are two obstetric divisions, one run by doctors and the other by midwives, advising the soon to be mom to stay clear of medical students. Already foreshadowing being attended by the medical students results in an uncomfortable situation, Nuland leaves the readers with curiosity and the answer to
In response to the Ebola scare in 2014, many people evinced strong fear and xenophobia (Kim, 2016). Especially about the zombie-like symptoms of the virus. In addition how does the virus slowly kills the victim without even realizing that he’s suffering from Ebola virus by replicating and filling the body with crystallized viruses hence damaging the human cells just like a new living organism controls another’s body and killing it bit by bit. To exemplify my relatives used to live in kenya about 43 years ago they were surrounded by ill people that make them terrified and fearful of getting the highly contagious disease, therefore they left kenya and currently they live in the UAE. The most complicated part if you were surrounded by Ebola virus is to calm people down and instead of leaving the country finding beneficial solutions so that the virus won’t disperse from one country to another.
A virus is an infective agent that usually consists of a protein coat with a nucleic acid molecule. Viruses do not reproduce through asexual reproduction. Instead, they attach themselves to the cells in their victim’s body to create more viruses. Over the years, vaccines for certain viruses have been created to help humans combat them. However, for viruses such as Ebola, there have been no drugs approved to cure them.
This quote from Johnson showed how people viewed the social hierarchy, especially the suffering lower class. No sympathy was given and there was little time for it. This prejudice became a coping mechanism for the elite. Some even cited God as the reason for the outbreak as He was punishing the victims for living filthy lives or having “poor internal constitution”. This theory even affected the scientific community with the acceptance of the miasma theory of disease.
In an immunologically naïve host, viruses attach to the host cells (Tortora, & Funke, 2013). Adaptive immunity is slower to respond than innate immunity it does have a memory component is a function of the immunological system. The immunological system is able to recognize specific antigens and react in such a way that the host generates antibody-mediated immunity (AMI), cell-mediated immunity (CMI), or both. Adaptive immunity is the body’s third line of defense. An example is lymphocytes (T cells and B cells).
Viruses are completely dependent on host cells to be able to survive. “Viruses are not considered alive because they lack many of the properties that scientist associate with living organism. Primarily, they lack the ability to reproduce without the aid of a host cell, and do not use the typical cell-division approach to replication”according to wikipedia(2016). This demonstrate that viruses are not living because they can not survive by themself. Viruses are nonliving because they lack certain characteristics such as reproduction, responding to stimuli etc.