Emerging Viruses 6°: Ebola Virus
Another consideration coming from the recent epidemics of philoviruses (Ebola Virus-Emerging Viruses) is that just the means man made use of to treat diseases cause their outset and their spreading.
In 1976 the epidemics of Ebola-Zaire and Ebola-Sudan found their epicentre in the hospitals of Malindi and in the Yambuku Hospital. Infected needles and syringes played an important role in the spreading of the illness.
The arising of a viral epidemic at high mortality, as it has happened in many occasions with philoviruses, makes it necessary to be isolated and contained very soon. Even better both in the case of Marburg and Ebola it is as if the epidemics they caused had destroyed themselves[1]. Then the fact that these viruses are easily transmitted and cause the illness rapidily is considered a suicide combination of attributes by Johnson[2].
A philovirus epidemic among the twenty-two horses of a stable in Brisbane, in Queensland (Australia), transferred to the breeder and the stable man. After two weeks fourteen horses and one of the two men died. Also this case made a lot of fuss, but at the same time the epidemic was immediately isolated and at least now it has destroyed itself showing how a sudden epidemic at high mortality has less possibility of success than another one with much inferior mortality and transmissibility.
Philovirus epidemics have found their epicentre in hospitals because the high infectivity and virulence of the pathogens which cause them don’t allow them to live thanks to the normal transmission ways. If HIV is compared with philoviruses,it appears once again much more advanced as for the evolutionistic aspect and this lets us think that in the future its role, particularly the demographic one, will still be remarkable. In spite of this, the recent Ebola epidemics have had an exceptional fuss. Media, books, movies have emphasized the effects of this virus so as to be induced to some other considerations.
According to many neurologists and psychiatrists the evolution of our encephalon hasn’t kept up either with the technological evolution or with the new biological manifestations of the ecosystem. Therefore few hundreds of dead people in the last Ebola epidemic were enough so that media and consequently public opinion weren’t so interested in AIDS problem any longer.
Both in Preston’s book and in the movie ” Outbreak” the effects of the infection by philoviruses, above all as far as the internal and external hemorrhages appearing in the affected subjects is concerned, were particularly emphasized.
Probably the memory of the great epidemics of the past which caused victims in the same way of Ebola and Marburg is still present in our brain.
Other examples of new viruses causing new epidemics among animals or of viruses carrying out the trans-species jump from the animal reserve to man are numerous and recent.
Among the first there is the virus which, in South Australia, Victoria and Southern New Wales, starved one hundred thousand kangaroos causing them blindness. The Morbillivirus[3],[4], the one of the above-mentioned Australian epidemic is the second.
The case of the Bornavirus is even more interesting among the emerging viruses: according to some scholars it infects horses and humans and causes the same symptoms to both of them. Once the horse is affected by the virus, it nearly goes mad, becomes ungovernable and aggressive, gallops continuosly as long as, all of a sudden, starts ruminating without stopping till its death.
Some researchers, like Live Bode, a German one, ascribe some psychiatric troubles of man’s to the Encephalopathy caused by the Bornavirus. Suddenly the latter becomes euphoric, hyperactive, talkative and uninhibited, then suddenly he turns into a sad, pessimistic and dull fellow.
In 1994 the German researcher proved that the same viral proteins that had been seen in the blood of the animals affected by Bornavirus were present in the monocytes of some psychiatric patients. However bold the connection between infections caused by virus and psychiatric troubles may seem, I wanted to speak of them because it isn’t so absurd a hypothesis.
[1]Southwood T R E The natural environment and disease: an evolutionary perspective. Brit Med J 294: 1086-1987
[2] Johnson K M African hemorrhagic fever caused by Marburg and Ebola viruses in viral infection of humans: epidemiology and control. Ed. Evans A S Pag. 95-103 New York: Plenum.
[3] Murray K, Sellek P, Hooper P, Hyatt A, Gould A, Gleeson L, Wesbury H, Hiley L, Selvey L, Rodwell B, Ketterer P. A morbillivirus that caused a fatal disease in horses and humans. Science Vol. 268 Pag. 957 Apr. 95
[4] Nowak R. Causes of Fatal outbreak in horses and humans traced. Science Vol 268. Pag. 32 Apr. 95
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
See also:
2) Emerging Viruses 2°
3) Emerging Viruses 3°
4) Emerging Viruses 4°
5) Emerging Viruses 5°
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.