Those that state Ebola Reston has never infected human you are wrong.

Ebola Virus in Rhode Island

In an isolated live-in research facility located in Rhode Island, a group of scientists conducting research and experiments on Silverback gorillas from Gabon West Africa contracted a new strain of the Ebola virus. The several scientists, four to be exact, began to show signs of hemorrhagic fever, an illness common to Ebola victims. I was assigned to be the group's medical doctor and routinely made weekly, sometimes bi-weekly visits, in order to check on the group's health and overall condition while living in this research facility.

It was April 14, 2003 and my first medical check-up of the month with the group. I conducted my check-up as usual but soon begin to realize the most unusual thing. Each patient complained of joint and muscle pain, weakness, and a slight headache. I also noted that all four had a slight fever, about 2 to 3 degrees off the normal 98. I was definitely alarmed because of the fact that none of the scientists had been sick like this since my last visit. And [since] none of them had come into contact with any other human than myself, I soon realized that another source of their illness was to blame. I began to run blood, saliva, and urine tests on all four individuals and told them that I wanted to place them under quarantine and put an end to all experiments with the gorillas until I could find out the source of their illness. Initially Ebola didn't come to mind as the source of their illness, but being a medical doctor and virologist specialized in infectious diseases, I didn't rule out anything. The samples I had taken from each subject came back positive as infected with a new strain of Ebola. After ruling out other sources I concluded that the source had indeed been the gorillas from Gabon that the team had been working with.

But two questions still remained unanswered. How did they get infected under such controlled conditions? And secondly, how could this strain of the Ebola (which had apparently mutated from a strain of Ebola-Reston which was believed to only be harmful in primates) essentially jump species and become as deadly to humans as it had been to primates? I was bewildered and had no answers to these questions and the patients conditions worsened as the hours and days [passed]. The symptoms I diagnosed them with originally intensified and new ones emerged. Each patient began to show signs of hemorrhagic fever (HF). Each shared similar yet varied symptoms which included fever-spikes ranging from 99-105 degrees, mood swings (which was a prime indication that the virus was attacking the brain), red eyes (the rupturing of vessels in the eyes), droopy, emotionless facial expressions (due to the virus eating away at the connective tissue of the face), and red spider bruises began to show on the arms and legs of the body due to epidermal hemorrhages of the skin. These symptoms developed after 12 days of my initial diagnosis. To further note, of the 10 gorillas researched and experimented on 7 of them died and it was concluded that their deaths were a result of Ebola-Reston not the new mutated strain. At about day 16 all four patients' conditions got worse and followed similar fates as those infected with the deadly strain of Ebola-Zaire. Each patient fell into what we call Stage 3 or Extreme Amplification. The symptoms were as follow:

1. Red spider bruises begin to turn into dark purple masses, the whole body begins to
bruise.

2. Brain Damage begins to set in, host is no longer aware of surroundings.

3. Platelets begin clotting in internal organs such as the liver, kidneys, stomach
muscle, causing massive full body strokes.

4. Internal Hemorrhaging.

5. Black Vomit--host regurgitates blackish red fluid consisting of arterial blood,
mucous, and black specks which are the virus bricks--Black vomit is extremely hot and
one drop can contain up to 1 million virus particles.

6. Hemorrhaging in the nose cause nose bleeds that will not clot due to the clotting of
the internal organs. All injection sites also bleed without clotting.

At about day 26 each patient fell into what we call Stage 4 or Crashing and Bleeding Out. This is the final stage of HF and includes:

1. Disorientation--room begins spinning, and the host becomes limp.

2. Continued Black Vomiting which now includes the lining of the stomach.

3. Unconsciousness due to severe blood loss.

4. All bowels and control mechanisms release causing infectious speckled blood to flow
from every orifice, including eyes, nose, mouth, nipples, anal, and genital orifices.

5 Complete shock and multiple system failure.

6. Death.

Because this was the first case of the new strain of Ebola, the mortality rate was 100%, because all four scientists died from their infection. Upon further investigation the answer as to how these four scientists could have been infected came from reviewing lab video which showed that on April 2, 2003 one of the scientists was attacked by a gorilla and all four scientists were involved in the incident. The main scientist attacked was bitten and I can only conclude that the gorilla involved was one of the infected ones and that a transfer of secretions from the gorilla to the four scientists occurred within that incident. As I studied the samples from both human and gorilla, I found that Ebola-Reston had mutated from its original state into one which allowed it to "jump" the species boat from primate to humans. The public was not informed because this was an isolated and well kept government secret, unlike the cases in Gabon, Zaire and Sudan which faced an outbreak of Ebola with devastating results (over 300 people died). The panic and horror caused by the outbreak of Ebola-Sudan and Zaire nearly brought these countries to their knees. The reason for such an outbreak came as a result of doctors not recognizing the disease and because of the fact that medical equipment that had been used to treat infected individuals had been reused on other patients without proper sterilization. Both strains, Ebola-Sudan and Zaire, have high mortality rates ranging from 70%-90% (respectively). Fortunately I was able to isolate the patients and myself before any real outbreak occurred. I have been unsuccessful in determining the origin of this Ebola strain and join the countless others who are trying to find the natural niche of Ebola. There has been much effort to locate the source of Ebola but all have proven to be unsuccessful. We do however believe that it initially can and will be found within an animal species. More research needs to be done in order to see if this new strain of Ebola can be detected anywhere in the United States. Let us certainly hope not.

Information gathered from the following websites:

www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/3562/filovirus.html

www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola.htm#top

www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/interview_murphy.html
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"Ebola Virus in Rhode Island." 123HelpMe.com. 16 Sep 2014
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