>If you've been not following the news, the ebola virus has broken out (again) in Zaire. Hundreds are dead or dying already. There is no cure. While the news media have been good at telling us its deadly, they seem to have avoided the details. Someone sent them to me. Nasty is not even a word to describe this. Sounds more like a bio-weapon than anything else. The timing is good too, since "VIRUS" a TV movie based on the book /Outbreak/ was on TV Monday.
>-dhan
>>you should read this while eating or something...
>>--------------------
>>Copied without permission from _The Hot Zone_, by Richard Preston.
>>Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite because it transforms virtually every part of the body into a digested slime of virus particles. The seven mysterious proteins that, assembled together, make up the Ebola-virus particle, work as a relentless machine, a molecular shark, and they consume the body as the virus makes copies of itself. Small blood clots begine to appear in the bloodstream, and the blood thickens and slows, and clots begine to stick to the walls of blood vessels. This is known as pavementing, because the clots fit together in a mosaic. The mosaic thickens and throws more clots, and the clots drift through the blodstream into the small capillaries, where they get stuck. This shuts off the blood supply to various parts of the body, causing dead spots to apear in the brain, liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, testicles, breast tissue (of men as well as women), and all through the skin. The skin develops red spots, called petechiae, which are hemorrhages under the skin. Ebola attacks connective tissue with particular ferocity; it multiplies in collegen, the chief constituent protein of the tissue that holds the organs togehter. (The seven Ebola proteins somehow chew up the body's structural proteins.) In this way, collagen in the body turns to mush, and the underlayers of the skin die and liquefy. The skin bubbles up into a sea of tiny white blisters mixed with red spots known as a maculopapular rash. This rash has been likened to tapioca pudding. Spontaneous rips appear in the skin, and hemmoraghic blood pours from the rips. The red spots on the skin grow and spread and merge to become huge, spontaneous bruises, and the skin goes soft and pulpy, and can tear off if it is touched with any kind of pressure. Your mouth bleeds, and you bleed around your teeth, and you may have hemorrhages from the salivary glands -- literally every opening in the body bleeds, no matter how small. The surface if the toungue turns brilliant red and the sloughs off, and is swallowed or spat out. It is said to be extraordinarily painful to lose the surface of one's tongue. The tongue's skin may be torn off during rushes of thre black vomit. The back of the throat and the lining of the wind pipe may also slough off, and the dead tissue slides down the windpipe into the lungs or is coughed up with sputum. Your heart bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a conditions known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body's internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender.
>>Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys becomes jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a baseball. The intestines may fill up completely with blood. The lining of the gut dies and sloughs off into the bowels and is defecated along with large amounts of blood. In men, the testicles bloat up and turns black-and-blue, the semen goes hot with Ebola, and the nipples may bleed. In women, the labia turn blue, livid, and protrusive, and there may be massive vaginal bleeding. The virus is a catastrophe for a pregnant woman: the child is aborted spontaneously and is usually infected with Ebola virus, born with red eyes and a bloody nose.
>>Ebola destroys the brain more thoroughly than does Marburg, and Ebola victims often go into epileptic convulsions during the final stage. The convulsions are generalized grand mal seizures -- the whole body twitches and shakes, the arms and legs thrash around, and the eyes, sometimes bloody, roll up into the head. The tremors and convulsions of the patient may smear or splatter blood around. Possibly this epileptic splashing of blood is one of Ebola's strategies for success -- it makes the victim go into a flurry of seizures as he dies, spreading blood all over the place, thus giving the virus a chance to jump to a new host -- a kind of transmission through smearing.
>>Ebola (and Marburg) multiplies so rapidly and powerfully that the body's infected cells become crystal-like blocks of packed virus particles. These crystal are broods of virus getting ready to hatch from the cell. They are known as bricks. The bricks, or crystals, first appear near the center of the cell and then migrate towards the surface. As a crystal reaches a cell wall, it disintegrates into hundres of individual virus particles, and the broodlings push through the cell wall like hair and floot away in the bloodstream of the host. The hatched Ebola particles cling to cells everywhere in the body, and get inside them, and continue to multiply. It keeps on multiplying until areas of tissue all through the body are filled with crystalloids, which hatch, and more Ebola particles drift into the bloodstream, and the amplification continues inexorably until a droplet of the hosts blood can contain a hundred million individual particles.
>>After death, the cadaver suddenly deteriorates: the internal organs, having been dead or partially dead for days, have already begun to dissolve, and a sort of shock-related meltdown occurs. The corpse's connective tissue, skin, and organs, already peppered with dead spots, heated by fever, and damaged by shock, begin to liquefy, and the fluids that leak from the cadaver are saturated with Ebola-virus particles.
>>--------- end of excerpt ---------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------
DAT list available at: archive.phish.net /pub/phish/tapeslists/stevedat.doc or .txt Want to buy a pool table?? E-mail for details.
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From: dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
Subject: Re: EBOLA yuks
Date: 18 May 1995 18:41:15 GMT
On Thu. May 18, 1995, i.stang@metronet.com told All:
>>After death, the cadaver suddenly deteriorates: the internal organs,
isc> having been dead or partially dead for days, have already begun to
> dissolve, and a sort of shock-related meltdown occurs. The corpse's
> connective tissue, skin, and organs, already peppered with dead
> spots, heated by fever, and damaged by shock, begin to liquefy, and
> the fluids that leak from the cadaver are saturated with Ebola-virus
> particles.
That's called "bleeding out" in biowarfare terms. It's been known to
happen while the subject was still alive -- briefly.
The network news correctly reported a week or so ago that the virus is
certainly water vectored, and possibly air vectored. They are now claiming
it's strictly a contact sport. Someone is scared. Probably the CDC.
--
dynasor@infi.net The Doctor is on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: bmyers@ionet.net (TarlaStar)
Subject: Re: EBOLA yuks
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 07:46:03 GMT
Organization: Little Sisters of the Perpetually Juicy
Stang you BASTARD!!! YOU STOLE MY SLACK! I read that story about the
Ebola virus last
night. I woke up this morning at 4:30 with Apocalyptic nightmares,
suddenly concerned about where I could find both an M-16 AND a
flamethrower. Today was supposed to be my DAY OFF! I met Sister Jane
at the Gym and instead of pure concentration...I kept visualizing
someone pumping iron and suddenly turning to runny jelly, right in
front of me. Look, I'll admit it...I'm no death lover. I hate dead
shit. I CHASE flies out of the house, not because I care about a
fucking fly's life, but because I can't stand the thought of squashed
fly body, shit, and germs on any surface I might eventually have
contact with. I don't give two shits what all the other
lovers-of-dead-miscellany have to say about it. It's MY SubGenius way
to avoid dead or partially decomposing items. (As an aside, my cats
have gone into hyperdeathdrive this Spring. We live in the country
and they like to bring me dinnner, since they consider me a member of
the pride. Garbo brought me a field mouse, ((which I covered with a
paper towel until my husband disposed of it)),and a still live
cottontail, which I was able to rescue and release. Bonehead brought
in both a bunny ((leaving the bloody carcass next to my computer,
where I'd be sure to find the trophy)) and a nice-sized cardinal. It's
been a blood and guts kinda Spring here at the CONvent...just my
luck.)
I fucked around in the garden, pulling the biggest weeds, then
strolled out to the mailbox. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a
light breeze. Suddenly I found my self looking at the property from a
defensive point of view. Could I defend the place from DERANGED AND
OOZING EBOLA ZOMBIES???...sudden Slack drainage. I bet YOU got a BONER
right then, you SLACK VAMPIRE, YOU!
I read on the 'net for a bit, then Sister Duffy and I went to get our
haircut. Well being with HER was Slackful enough, but it took all of
her sweetness-and-light-covering-purest-venom, just to get us through
the PURE PINKNESS of the BEAUTY PARLOR. But that's another rant for
another time.
I don't know about anyone else here, but my brain structure is such,
that I run endless loops of the same thought when the chemistry
shifts. I was looped on Ebola yesterday. It wasn't quite a
depression or I wouldn't have been able to write this...but it sure
sucked...or leaked, or Grand Mal'ed, shaking infected blood
all over the inside of my skull. Please, Daddy, make it go away. I
don't want to think about it any more. I WANT MY SLACK BACK,
STANG...WHEREVER THE HELL YOU'RE KEEPING IT!
Return it this instant and I'll completely forget this whole
incident. Keep it, and I'll make sure you eat nothing
but Po'Bucker girlface sandwiches for the rest of your days! And DON'T
try to blame it all on Sternodox again!!
hugs and kisses,
--
Reverend Mutha Tarla, Little Sisters of the Perpetually Juicy,
A Proud Jism Schism of the Church of the SubGenius, Worshipping
"Connie" Dobbs and Juicy Retardo since 1986
http://www.ionet.net/~bmyers/homepage.html
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From: dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
Subject: Re: EBOLA yuks
On Sat. May 20, 1995, ghsst6+@pitt.edu told All:
ge> anyone who liked that except should read the whole book, "The Hot
> Zone". it's one of the most interesting, and scariest, books i've
> ever read.
ge> all in all, i think it's safe to say that ebola is not a good
> disease to get...
I talked with a doctor today (the medical type) who grew up in Liberia and
treated various epidemics all over Africa as well as the US. He won't have
anything to do with Ebola. He says there's nothing to be done. It just has
to run it's course. When I asked how bad it could get, he said "Five and a
half billion."
* 2qwk! 1.26b3 * Evil always triumphs over good, because good is STUPID!
--
dynasor@infi.net The Doctor is on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: daroca@berlin.snafu.de (Thorsten Kallnischkies)
Subject: Re: EBOLA slacks
Maybe Ebola yucks, but from inside it makes you slack as a sack in a shack.
Thorsten, MNT
Protopope of the Churches of the Inductively Coupled Ectoplasms,
Onkel und mehr
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From: i.stang@metronet.com (Rev. Ivan Stang)
Subject: Re: EBOLA yuks
Date: 24 May 1995 06:09:18 GMT
Ahhh, yer all a buncha SISSIES! Hell, a big spikey meteor could fall down
out of space, plunge through your roof, and KILL YOU RIGHT THIS SECOND,
RIGHT WHILE YOU ARE READING THIS!!
Ebola ain't SHIT next to the wild card. There's a guy here in Dallas, this
Joker, he's a comedian... he has a 7-11 for a HEAD! Except he didn't just
draw the Joker... he's kinda like part Ace. His rants are like something
you'd think of if you took about 700 Janor-Said-It-ERS and washed 'em down
with Danski's vodka.
But seriously now. A fine way to shake off latest-disease-o-phobia is to
read science fiction stories about epidemics, particularly epidemics from
space. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is of course the purest metaphor going,
and there's a paperback "shared world" anthology series called BOOK OF THE
DEAD (3 of them out now, I think)... they're inconsistent, but some of the
short stories found in those are GOD DAMNED SICK even by my standards.
Then you got your WILD CARD series. Look in the USED bookstore sci-fi
racks on author George RR Martin. Martin doesn't actually write most of
it; it's collaborative. You DON'T want the new, current crop of Wild Cards
books. They suck. But the very first one in the series is a true classic,
and the follow-ups are habit-forming. The basic premise is, an alien virus
causes an instant-mutation disease called Wild Card. Most who contract it
die, and most who survive become Jokers, SURREALISTICALLY deformed
monsters. A tiny fraction of those become Aces, folks with bizarre
super-powers. They all have cool Dick Tracy-style nicknames. The whole
series is an alternate history -- "WHAT IF super-heroes and super-villains
actually existed, starting about 1940?" The series is like an insane soap
opera, with a dozen or so sf writers (inc. Roger Zelazny and Lewis Shiner)
contributing.
These books can put a whole new slant on things like Ebola and AIDS. And
racism and hatred and all that cool shit. Of course nothing compares to
reading THE STAND for the first time while home sick with a really bad
case of flu, and then taking a walk and finding THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD
TOTALLY SILENT AND DEAD.
That TV show of THE STAND sucked, but I gotta admit that the panoramic
shots of zillions of dead Pinks as far as the eye could see... well, the
finest pornography pales in comparison.
I rescanned Robert Heinlein's old gonad-heistin' THE PUPPET MASTERS book
after seeing the movie. That's another "epidemic orgy."
When something awful in real life gets you down, grab some sci fi
potboiler that takes that particular problem and AMPLIFIES IT BY A FACTOR
OF TEN. There's nothing more soothing than the feeling that "well, it
COULD be WORSE."
Stang
--
Copyright 1995 by Rev. Ivan Stang / 1st Orthodox Stangian
MegaFisTemple Lodge of People's Covenant Church of the
Wrath of Dobbs Yeti, Resurrected / The SubGenius Foundation,Inc.
PO Box 140306 Dallas TX 75214 / Fax 214-320-1561 / PRABOB
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ac118@lafn.org (Matthew Carey)
Subject: Re: EBOLA yuks
In a previous article, dudeyp@darwin.cs.orst.edu (Peter Dudey Drake) says:
>How many Stangs of pain does one suffer when dying of Ebola? Will
>there be a lot of this on X-day?
>
Ebolacicle.
Ebola pie.
Ebola toddy.
Ebola loaf.
Ebola Kool-Ade.
You know, this is dumb....
--
Rev. Matthew A. Carey Rips \ on Vision Temple--Tarzana, CA
18653 Ventura Blvd., Suite #379 ]\[ "We are not an occult."
Tarzana, Calif. 91356 Rips \ off mnbvc
ac118@lafn.org ]\[
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: dynasor@infi.net (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)
On Sun. May 21, 1995, ricky@usenet.nerdc.ufl.ed told All:
rnue> : The network news correctly reported a week or so ago that the
> virus is : certainly water vectored, and possibly air vectored.
> They are now claiming : it's strictly a contact sport. Someone is
> scared. Probably the CDC.
rnue> So why didn't this virus kill us all ten thousand years ago?
Why didn't bubonic plague wipe out the neandrathals?
Sufficient systemic oxygen to keep it in check. This was an environmental
disease, vectored by pollution which includes atmospheric ratio changes.
It evolved to a more harmful form recently.
Insufficient contact for a very fast acting virus to spread faster than it
kills the host. Any pathogen that acts too fast kills itself when it kills
the host.
rnue> Isn't it ODD how a story like this gets so much MEDIA ATTENTION
> coinciding with a MOVIE release? I don't believe in
> coincendences.
Not really. Epidemics are always news and are frequent. I'd be surprised
if there wasn't one when some book or movie came out. Especially nowdays
when there's lots more of both of them.
rnue> Well, this means I have to pay a visit to sci.med because I need
> one of those SCIENTIFIC TALISMANS that will protect me from this
> DREAD DISEASE. As if I didn't know in my heart that all the
> learned wisdom in the world cannot quell the demon.
There is none. Not a damn one. And there's nothing on sci.med except
highly evolved argument monsters. If you want something on it, watch the
newsgroup that they started about it.
* 2qwk! 1.26b3 * This PIZZA symbolizes my COMPLETE EMOTIONAL RECOVERY!
--
dynasor@infi.net The Doctor is on.
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