Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science (33 page)

genomics
The sequencing and study of genes in DNA.

gout
A disease, first identified by doctors at the time of Hippocrates, in which crystals of uric acid build up in the extremities, especially the big toe, causing severe pain.

Home Depot thing, the
(or
It
) A powerful computer built by mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky.

host
An organism in or on which a
parasite
lives.

hot zone, hot suite
A Biosafety Level 4 biocontainment laboratory.

HPRT protein
A protein produced by all cells in the human body, used for recycling purines (by-products of the processing of DNA). When HPRT is absent from cells, due to a defect in a gene, the result in humans is
Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.
The full name of this protein is hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase.

Human Genome Project, the
A nonprofit international research consortium that deciphered the complete sequence of nucleotides, or letters, in the human DNA.

IMAS
Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing, at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn. Principally occupied by David and Gregory Chudnovsky (
the Chudnovsky Mathematician
).

Institute, the
Nickname for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (
USAMRIID
), at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

It
See
Home Depot thing.

J. Craig Venter Institute
A nonprofit institute dedicated to research in genomics, founded and run by genomic scientist J. Craig Venter.

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome
A rare genetic disease, almost invariably expressed in males, in which the patient engages in compulsive acts of self-injury. It was first characterized in 1962 by medical researcher William L. Nyhan and medical student Michael Lesch at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Ludolphian number, the
The same number as
pi
(p). The name is derived from Ludolph van Ceulen, a German mathematician of the seventeenth century who approximated pi to thirty-five decimal places and had the digits engraved on his tombstone.

m zero
A powerful supercomputer constructed largely of mail-order parts by the mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky. Predecessor to the
Home Depot thing.

Mbwambala
A patch of disturbed woodland about three miles long and half a mile wide that wanders along a stream about six miles southeast of the city of Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)
A federally funded collection of medical research institutes situated on a campus in Bethesda, Maryland, that both conducts and funds many billions of dollars in medical research every year.

nucleotide
An information-carrying building block, or “letter,” of DNA. There are four nucleotides in DNA: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine; they are designated by the letters A, T, C, and G.

number theory
The mathematical study of the properties of numbers.

parasite
An organism that lives on or inside another organism, its
host,
and feeds on the host, being harmful to the host or of no benefit to it.

pi (
)
The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Expressed in decimals, pi goes 3.14159…and continues infinitely, without periodically repeating. Pi is a
transcendental number.

pubic symphysis
An area in the lower front of the pelvis where the pelvic bones join in a suture filled with cartilage.

red diarrhea, the
The local Congolese term for an Ebola virus infection during the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, Congo.

self-mutilation, compulsive
Uncontrollable physical self-injury, such as self-biting. In
Lesch-Nyhan syndrome
it arises ultimately from a defect in the gene that codes for the
HPRT
protein, though the exact mechanism of the disease is unknown.

strebelid flies
Parasitic wingless flies that crawl and live on bats. A conjectured possible natural host of the Ebola virus.

supercomputer
One of the world’s most powerful computers for its time.

TIGR
The Institute for Genomic Research, a nonprofit research institute dedicated to sequencing
genomes,
now part of the
J. Craig Venter Institute
in Rockville, Maryland.

transcendental number
A number that is not the exact solution to any polynomial equation that has a finite number of terms with integer coefficients.
See
pi.

tubular cast, throwing a
Expelling through the anus a sleevelike lining of the intestines and rectum.

Unicorn Tapestries, the
Seven tapestries of large size and exceptional preservation and beauty (though one of them is now in fragments), originally woven around 1500 in Brussels or Liège, now hanging in the Cloisters Museum in New York City. The Unicorn Tapestries are considered to be among the great works of art of all time.

virus
A disease-causing agent smaller than a bacterium consisting of a shell made of proteins and membranes and a core containing DNA or RNA. A virus is a parasite that can replicate only inside living cells, using the machinery of the cell to make more copies of itself.

warp, weft
Strong, straight noncolored threads (warp threads) and delicate undulating colored threads (weft threads) are woven to form a tapestry. In many late medieval tapestries, including the
Unicorn Tapestries,
the warp threads run horizontally and the weft threads run vertically.

wet lab
An underground room at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art where tapestries and works of fabric art are washed, conserved, and photographed.

Zarate procedure
A surgical procedure whereby the bones of the pelvis are cut in front, at the location of the
pubic symphysis,
the cut running through a suture of cartilage there. It causes the pelvis to spring open. The Zarate procedure is a crude but effective way of releasing a baby stuck in the birth canal.

Acknowledgments

The principal thanks in this book must be given to the people who are portrayed in it. They often patiently and generously submittted to the sort of tedious questioning that I gave Nancy Jaax when I examined her hands. I’m especially grateful to: Nancy Jaax; “Jeremy” “Martha” Gregory and Christine Chudnovsky; David Chudnovsky and Nicole Lannegrace; the late Malka Benjaminovna Chudnovsky; the late Herbert Robbins; Richard Askey; William T. Close; Will Blozan; Heidi Blozan; Rusty Rhea; Kristine Johnson; Tom Remaley; Tim Tigner; Lee Frelich; Carolyn Mahan; Richard Evans; James Åkerson; Christopher Asaro; Stephen C. Sillett; D. Scott Sillett; Robert Van Pelt; J. Craig Venter; Claire Fraser; Hamilton O. Smith; Marshall R. Peterson; James D. Watson; Eric S. Lander; Norton Zinder; Francis Collins; Gene Meyers; Jeffrey and Tondra Lynford; Morton H. Meyerson; Tom Morgan; Peter Barnet; Barbara Bridgers; Scott Geffert; Joseph Coscia, Jr.; Oi-Cheong Lee; Timothy Husband; William L. Nyhan; Michael Lesch; Nancy Esterly; James Elrod; James Elrod’s sister; the late and beloved Jim Murphy; all the members of the Murphy family I met, who gave so generously of their time and thought; Andy Pereira; Steve Glenn; Tracye Overby; Michael Roth; Christopher Reeves; Brad Alerich; H. A. Jinnah; Takaomi Taira; Philippe Coubes.

Many thanks to Tim Bartlett, my editor at Random House, who is the overall editor of this book. Many thanks also to Tina Bennett and Lynn Nesbit at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. At
The New Yorker,
past and present, I’m grateful to the following people for their contributions to various parts of this book: Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, John Bennet, Sharon DeLano, Dorothy Wickenden, Amy Davidson, Peter Canby, Martin Baron, Ann Goldstein, Elisabeth Biondi, Elizabeth Culbert, and the late Miss Eleanor Gould (Eleanor Packard); while the following checkers worked on certain parts: Hal Espen (“The Mountains of Pi”); Christopher Jennings and Michael Peed (“A Death in the Forest”); Bill Vourvoulias and Daniel Hurewitz (“The Search for Ebola”); Andy Young (“The Human Kabbalah”); Marina Harss (“The Lost Unicorn”); and Lila Byock and Jessica Rosenberg (“The Self-Cannibals”). Any errors of fact in this book are my responsibility, though where I got things right, very often a checker was involved.

My wife, Michelle, and our children, Marguerite, Laura, and Oliver, with their endless curiosity and openness to new things, inspired this book. They were also present for some of the interviews in “The Lost Unicorn,” and they have had their own friendship with the Chudnovsky family and asked their own questions. Michelle, who worked as a checker at
The New Yorker,
inspired me in fact-checking. She continues to inspire me in far greater ways than that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
ICHARD
P
RESTON
is the bestselling author of
The Hot Zone, The Cobra Event, The Demon in the Freezer,
and
The Wild Trees.
A writer for
The New Yorker
since 1985, Preston won the American Institute of Physics Award and is the only non-doctor ever to have received the CDC’s Champion of Prevention Award. He also has an asteroid named after him. He lives near New York City with his wife and three children.

ALSO BY RICHARD PRESTON

First Light

American Steel

The Hot Zone

The Cobra Event

The Demon in the Freezer

The Boat of Dreams: A Christmas Story

The Wild Trees

Copyright © 2008 by Richard Preston

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Portions of this book appeared in different form in
The New Yorker.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Jean-François Ruppol, M.D., for permission to reprint an excerpt from his unpublished narrative “Ebola 2,” translated into English from French by Richard Preston and William T. Close. Used by permission of Jean-François Ruppol, M.D.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Preston, Richard
Panic in level 4/Richard Preston.
p.   cm.
“Portions of this book appeared in different form in
The New Yorker.
”
eISBN: 978-1-58836-728-0
1. Medicine, Popular. 2. Science. 3. Science writers. I. Title.
RC81.P856 2008    616.02'4—dc22    2007041770

www.atrandom.com

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FOOTNOTES

^*1
Hal Espen later became a senior editor at
The New Yorker
and later the editor of
Outside
magazine.
Return to text.

^*2
More precisely: a transcendental number cannot be expressed as the exact solution to any polynomial equation that has a finite number of terms with integer coefficients.
Return to text.