Deadly Ebola Virus

After looking at many articles I believe that viruses are not alive. Even though in the beginning I believed they were. For an object to be alive it needs to have certain characteristics such as being able to: grow, develop, have a purpose, reproduce, adapt, and have cells. A living thing could reproduce which means they would make offspring. Viruses don't have the ability to grow and develop on their own. Viruses don’t have the ability to reproduce on their own without the help of a keeper

Ebola is described by the author in deep detail telling the progression of which it goes through. It starts with a headache and backache and ends with all of your internal organs failing “bleeding out” like Charles Monet. There are four filoviruses: Ebola virus (EBOV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Marburg virus (MARV), and Ravn virus (RAVV). They are all Level 4 biohazard, which means they are extremely dangerous to humans especially because they are so infectious, have a high death rate, and there are no medicines, treatments, or cures.

There are many debates on whether viruses are living or nonliving cells. Viruses are organisms that infect living cells around its area. The characteristics of life describe a living cell and viruses only exemplify a few of those things such as adapting to their environment and containing a well-organized system. While viruses do portray some characteristics of life, they don’t reproduce, grow/develop, or display metabolism. Based on these viruses are not living.

The Ebola virus is the most feared virus of our time. What exactly is Ebola? Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever actually named after the River Ebola in Zaire, Africa, where it was first discovered. It belongs to a genus of ribonucleic viruses called filoviruses, under the family Filofiridae, which are characterized by their filament-like (thread-like) appearance with a little hook or loop at the end. Only five viruses exist in this family: the not-as-deadly Marburg, and the four Ebola strains: Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Tai and Ebola Reston. The latter

Discovered in 1976 near the Ebola River, Ebola’s first two outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire killed the majority, over half, of the people infected with the disease. Although the natural host reservoir of Ebola has yet to be found, the virus is believed to be animal-borne. A person gets Ebola from a wild animal and then is spread throughout the human population through person-to-person transmission. Healthcare workers providing aide for Ebola victims know that they have a high possibility of contracting the disease because they are exposed to infected blood and body fluids. It could take from two to twenty-one days for the Ebola Virus to show symptoms in humans, and

got sick and died. This outbreak infected 318 with a death rate of 93% (Le

First, what is it and how are they spread. Rabies is a disease caused by a virus (Vaccines.org). It is commonly found in infected, warm-blooded animals and may be a serious risk factor to pets and people. Humans most often come in contact with the rabies virus (Michelle Badash, MS).

The Ebola Haemorrahagic Fever, or Ebola for short, was first recognized as a virus in 1967. The first breakout that caused the Ebola virus to be recognized was in Zaire with 318 people infected and 280 killed. There are five subtypes of the Ebola virus, but only four of them affect humans. There are the Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast and the Ebola-Bundibugyo. The fifth one, the Ebola-Reston, only affects nonhuman primates. The Ebola-Zaire was recognized on August 26, 1976 with a 44 year old schoolteacher as the first reported case. The Ebola-Sudan virus was also recognized in 1976 and was thought to be that same as Ebola-Zaire and it is thought to have broken out in a cotton factory in the Sudan. The Ebola-Ivory Coast was

Viruses have the capabilities and functionalities of a living organism, therefore they are living. Like all other living organisms, viruses are made of DNA and RNA, the simple building blocks of life. Living things can’t function without DNA because they wouldn’t be able to grow or reproduce. Viruses can also reproduce and have a functional/life span, both of which are necessities of life and are needed to create new life. A virus’s ability to function in this way gives it the characteristics of a living organism. Although, viruses need a host they should still be considered living, due to the fact that many living things need a host. Parasites, ticks, and mosquitoes are considered living even though they need a host to survive as well. Human

Ebola is the better-known member of a small family of viruses known as Filoviridae. The other lesser-known member is Marburg. The Ebola virus has five known subtypes, four of which are highly pathogenic to humans. The fifth, Ebola Reston Virus was first isolated in a group of primates that had been imported from the Philippines to a research laboratory in Reston, Virginia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, within weeks, the same virus was isolated during similar outbreaks in labs in Pennsylvania, Texas and Siena, Italy. In each case, the affected animals had been imported from a facility in the Philippines. (CDC, 2008) The four species that are pathogenic to humans are Zaire, Sudan, Tai Forest and Bundibugyo.

Ebola is a deadly virus disease that is transmitted through direct contact with contaminated surfaces or bodily fluids of humans or animals, (“Ebola virus disease,” 2016). It is not entirely known exactly how Ebola works in the body, but scientists have theories, (“What Does Ebola Do to the Body,” 2016). An article by Servick (2014) states that once it has entered the body, the virus attacks the victim’s dendritic cells, which activates the body’s T cells, so the body is unable to fend off the disease. The article notes that the virus is able to replicate itself quickly by intercepting interferons, which are molecules that stop viral reproduction, and potentially kill the victim if left untreated. Victims generally break out into fevers and have body pains in the early stages of infection, (“What Does Ebola Do to the Body,” 2016). Servick (2014) also indicates that next, macrophages, which are a type of white blood cell, eats the virus as it travels through the blood which in turn infects the macrophage and causes clotting in the blood vessels and decreases blood flow to vital parts of the body. She asserts that it also causes the blood vessels to leak because they produce nitric oxide, a gas, which leads to a symptom of some patients externally hemorrhaging and bleeding from certain orifices. Ebola either targets cells in different tissues or it signals for immune cells to release inflammatory molecules which also destroy cells, as mentioned in Servick’s article.

Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever is a severe and often deadly illness that occurs in humans and primates. Ebola viruses are members of the filovirus family. The Ebola virus causes the infection of this disease. There are four subtypes of the Ebola virus that have occurred in humans: Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Ivory Coast, and Ebola Bundibogyo. There was also a case of Ebola that occurred in a non-human in Reston, Virginia. The Zaire virus was the first Ebola virus discovered and it is also considered the most deadly form of the virus.

In March of 2014, the commonly known virus, previously referred to as hemorrhagic fever, now Ebola, had begun to take effect over Guinea in West Africa. The main outbreaks of this disease were centered in West Africa, but it also traveled to other places in the world, having less major effects. The Ebola disease comes in five different forms of viruses, four which can actually show symptoms in humans. Reston is the fifth strand of virus that can only be found in non-human primates such as monkeys, chimpanzees or gorillas. Researchers have no specific evidence on how this virus was contracted, but believe that bats are likely the host. Shortly after the outbreak of the disease in West Africa, cases were reported in Liberia,

The Ebola virus is a pandemic that is of much concern around the world, lately. It was not always a concern of this magnitude. Ebolavirus is the etiologic agent. It is a relatively new virus, introduced just in 1970. It was first discovered in Sudan and Zaire (it was named after the Ebola river is Zaire). The first outbreak occurred in Sudan infecting about 284 people, with a mortality rate of 53% (Waterman, 1999). Just a few months later, the second strain of the Ebola virus (Eboz) became prevalent in Zaire. It had a much higher mortality rate than the strand in Sudan (Ebola-Sudan) of 88% and is still to this day the strain of Ebola with the highest mortality rate. It infected 318 people during the outbreak of Zaire. Two more strains of this deadly virus were discovered in 1989 and in 1994, but the mortality rate of those not as high as their predecessors.

In the 16th century, an Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro discovered that rabies was a fatal disease affecting humans as well as animals, calling it "an incurable wound”. However, it was Louis Pasteur a French biologist that created the first vaccine in 1885 (Wnek, 2009). Rabies is transmitted through the saliva or through the tissue within the central nervous system that is transmitted by an infected mammal to another mammal. Once the mammal is infected either through a bite, scratch or by licking an open infected wound, the virus will begin to attack and destroy the neurological system. In addition other forms of transmission are when infected saliva comes in contact with the eyes, nose and mouth. Dogs are the cause of over 90 percent of human rabies infections. On another note raccoons, bats, skunks and foxes