"He opens his mouth and gasps into the bag, and the vomiting goes on endlessly. It will not stop, he keeps bringing up liquid, long after his stomach should have been empty. The airsickness bag fills up to the brim with a substance known as vomito negro, or black vomit. The vomit is not really black; it is speckled liquid of two colors, black and red, a stew of tarry granules mixed with fresh red arterial blood. It is hemorrhage, and it smells like a slaughterhouse. The black vomit is loaded with the virus. It is highly infective, lethally hot, liquid that would scare the daylights out of any military biohazard specialist."

- excerpt from THE HOT ZONE by Richard Preston -

Ebola is a part of the negative stranded RNA family known as filovirus. Negative stranded RNA is a single strand of RNA that is the genome of the virus. Once the virus infects a cell, the RNA makes a positive opposite copy of itself so that the new positive copy can make new negative genomes. The virus takes about 8 hours to replicate. Then hundreds to thousands of new v

As of now there is no cure or vaccine. The host to Ebola is unknown which is a part to figure out a cure or vaccine. A lot of people think that monkeys are the hosts of the virus but is very unlikely since monkeys die as quickly as humans. The disease would need to find a host capable of transmitting the disease, not something that will die quick. The virus lives the longest in the reproductive organs, so an infected male may have the virus in his testicles longer than any other part of his body and can be infectious of up to seven weeks.

This virus is spread through close contact with the infected person, sexual contact, and by reusing needles, which is common in developing countries. There is also one strain of Ebola that is airborne but is not fatal if treated right. Recent outbreaks have occurred in places such as Zaire, Gabon, Sudan, and even in Texas.

The death rate of Ebola is about 90% and so far there have been no second infections among the person who had it. Recent studies have found that if immunity exists after infection, the virus may be virus strain specific.

irus particles are releas

Some common words found in the essay are:
Africa Zaire, , Preston Ebola, Ebola Tai, negative stranded rna, Sudan Texas, negative stranded, virus spread, stranded rna, black vomit, virus virus, cure vaccine,
Approximate Word count = 756
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)