Quotes from Richard Preston

A monkey directs its attacks toward the face and head. It will grab you by the head, using all four limbs, and then it will wrap its tail around your neck to get a good grip, and it will make slashing attacks all over your face with its teeth, aiming especially for the eyes. This is not a good situation if the monkey happens to be infected with Ebola virus.

the family of filoviruses comprised Marburg along with two types of a virus called Ebola. The Ebolas were named Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan. Marburg was the mildest of the three filovirus sisters. The worst of them was Ebola Zaire. The kill rate in humans infected with Ebola Zaire is nine out of ten. Ninety percent of the people who come down with Ebola Zaire die of it. Ebola Zaire is a slate wiper in humans.

Marburg virus (the gentle sister) affects humans somewhat like nuclear radiation, damaging virtually all of the tissues in their bodies. It attacks with particular ferocity the internal organs, connective tissue, intestines, and skin.

The Chemturion type is also known as a blue suit, because it is bright blue. It is a pressurized, heavy-duty plastic space suit that meets government specifications for work with airborne hot agents.

There was one case in which a man in Level 4 suddenly began screaming, "Get me out of here!"—and he tore off his space suit's helmet, taking great gasps of air from Level 4. (They dragged him into a chemical shower and kept him there for a while.)

One man infected his wife with Marburg through sexual intercourse.

They had been injected with the hottest strain of Ebola known to the world. It was the Mayinga strain of Ebola Zaire.

The monkeys showed no facial expression, not even pain or agony. The connective tissue under the skin had been destroyed by the virus, causing a subtle distortion of the face. Another reason for the strange faces was that the parts of the brain that control facial expression had also been destroyed.

In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species

The classic Ebola face made the monkeys look as if they had seen something beyond comprehension.

They were two human primates carrying another primate. One was the master of the earth, or at least believed himself to be, and the other was a nimble dweller in trees, a cousin of the master of the earth.

According to standard doctrine, there are basically three ways to stop a virus—vaccines, drugs, and biocontainment. There was no vaccine for Ebola. There was no drug treatment for Ebola. That left only biocontainment.

How ethical is it to let these animals go a long time before they die?

The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder, and the rungs of the ladder—the nucleotides—can hold vast amounts of information, the code of life. A gene is a short stretch of DNA, typically about a thousand letters long, that holds the recipe for a protein or a group of related proteins. The total assemblage of an organism's genetic code—its full complement of DNA, comprising all its genes—is the organism's genome.

Ebola is distantly related to measles, mumps, and rabies. It is also related to certain pneumonia viruses: to the parainfluenza virus, which causes colds in children, and to the respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause fatal pneumonia in a person who has AIDS.

As always in biology, the problem was to know what you were looking at.

A zoologist at Humboldt State, Michael A. Camann, climbed in the Atlas Grove and took samples of the fern mats and discovered that they are also sprinkled with tiny aquatic creatures, crustaceans of an unnamed species of copepod. Copepods are oval-shaped, shrimp-like creatures, barely visible to the naked eye, that are sometimes called the insects of the ocean.

Are you worried about a species-threatening event?" He stared at me. "What the hell do you mean by that?" "I mean a virus that wipes us out." "Well, I think it could happen. Certainly it hasn't happened yet. I'm not worried. More likely it would be a virus that reduces us by some percentage. By thirty percent. By ninety percent.

A virus makes copies of itself inside a cell until eventually the cell gets pigged with virus and pops, and the viruses spill out of the broken cell. Or viruses can bud through a cell wall, like drips coming out of a faucet—drip, drip, drip, drip, copy, copy, copy, copy—that's the way the AIDS virus works.

A virus can be useful to a species by thinning it out

Looking at Ebola under an electron microscope is like looking at a gorgeously wrought ice castle. The thing is so cold. So totally pure.

A virus does not "want" to kill its host. That is not in the best interest of the virus, because then the virus may also die, unless it can jump fast enough out of the dying host into a new host.

had a habit of wearing a jacket and tie with a white shirt when he went into the field, because he felt that a well-dressed doctor would inspire confidence in the midst of the shit terror of a smallpox outbreak.

His personality is being wiped away by brain damage. This is called depersonalization, in which the liveliness and details of character seem to vanish.