Outpaced by Ebola

摘要

You discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. How? My lab received a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had died in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). She was diagnosed with yellow fever, but when we isolated the virus, it didn't look like anything we knew, Underthe electron microscope it looked like a worm. Then we got news from the World Health Organization of a major epidemic with a very high mortality rate in Zaire. We were told to stop all investigations because our lab wasn't equipped to deal with dangerous viruses. So we sent the virus to the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, They confirmed that it was a new virus.