"How 'The Hot Zone' Got It Wrong And Other Tales Of Ebola's History"

[hedgehog]

The experts said, "Ebola is not like how it's portrayed in the book. People do not dissolve. Their internal organs do not liquefy. People do not shed bloody tears."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/11/362379449/how-the-hot-zone-got-it-wrong-and-other-tales-of-ebolas-history

[sharp_stick]

1. The Hot Zone

was very dramatic and there was a lot of poetic licence taken throughout.

I was doing an undergraduate research project at the time in an infectious disease faculty and there was a lot of discussion over the more florid passages. There were people saying the whole book should be dumped and others who thought the amount of actual science was strong enough that it had a place.

[hedgehog]

2. The author of Hot Zone, Richard Preston, has a good rep as a non-fiction writer -

but he also writes thriller fiction, and did refer to the Hot Zone as a non-fiction thriller. I think he may have been a too willing target for some extreme leg pulling by the scientists.

[LeftInTX]

3. I watched a documentary on hemophilia

Although there is the perception of external hemorrhage, the main complication is internal bleeding from from bruises etc. Prior to available treatment the average lifespan was 11 years.

We tend to imagine hemophiliacs bleeding profusely, but that is not the reality.

Blood and gore sell