Predator Virus: Media’s Shaping of Ebola in the Western Public Mind
Victoria Dmyterko
Disease in History (HMED 3010)
1 December 2013
Introduction
Although Ebola was first reported in 1976, very little news was released on the outbreaks which
had occurred in Sudan and Zaire and that had taken the lives of 434 people.1 Then in 1989 there
was the Reston incident, where monkeys shipped to the United States from the Philippines died
in large numbers due to what is now known as Ebola Reston, fortunately that particular strain
was not found to be deadly to humans. One of the most important outcomes of this event was the
piqued interest of the media, a potentially deadly disease with no known cure had reared its head
in the Western world, and this made for interesting news. As one study on the relationship
between mass media and disease pointed out, “Even in today’s world of global terrorism, economic crises and political impasse, the news is often about one of the oldest of humankind’s problems: disease.”2 It was in 1994, with the release of Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone
that Ebola’s infamy was cemented into the minds of the Western public, the paperback’s status
as a number one seller for twenty weeks was a testament to the fascination people had for the
new and deadly.3 Within only twenty years Ebola had transformed from a virtually unknown
disease to the next killer of mankind, how did this happen? And why?
One of the most influential contributions to the shift in perspective on Ebola was its
earliest representations, in what Ungar called the Mutation-Contagion package, where the early
accounts of an emerging disease utilized fearful imagery and diction to capture and keep the
attention of its audience.4 Even just a brief skim of The Hot Zone, or a glance at the trailer for the
Warner Brother’s movie Outbreak, confirmed this notion, morbid depictions of the disease and
its effects abounded in mass media. Take, for instance, this brief passage from page 20 of
Preston’s novel, “He loses consciousness and pitches forward onto the floor. The only sound is a choking in his throat as he continues to vomit blood and black matter while
1
Xavier Pourrut et al., “The Natural History of Ebola Virus in Africa,” Microbes and Infection 7 (2005): pg. 1006,
doi: 10.1016/j.micinf.2005.04.006.
2
Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Daniel P. Carter, and Marie Hojnacki, “Whose Deaths Matter? Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 31 (2006): pg. 730, doi:
10.1215/03616878-2006-002.
3
Sheldon Ungar, “Hot Crises and Media Reassurance: A Comparison of Emerging Diseases and Ebola Zaire,” British Journal of Sociology 49 (1998): pg. 42, http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/stable/591262?seq=1&.,
Accessed 10 November 2013
4
Ibid, pg. 43 - 46
1
unconscious. Then comes a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half, which is the
sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus.”5
No doubt, this kind of scene did little to allay the fears of the public. Yet, when panic was about
to set in, news outlets changed their tune, and Ebola became a distinctly African killer virus.
Suddenly it was the burden of the ‘other’, chiefly Zairians who were often described as unsanitary, impoverished, and uneducated. Once again, the disease underwent a metamorphosis
within a short time span, and mass media started to employ the Containment package by using
the technique of ‘othering’ (where the afflicted population is cast as completely foreign and nonWestern) to try and calm the growing panic.6 Soon after there was a significant drop in the
coverage of Ebola, in fact, after May 1995 there were virtually no follow up articles.7 The virus
had become just another blip on the media radar.
This paper aims to show how Western mass media created the image of a ‘predator virus’: a purposeful, high deadly man-killer that would emerge out of Africa, hop on a plane, and
go on to wipe out mankind. In order to understand Ebola’s transformation it is pertinent to know the brief history of the virus, its medical symptoms, and overall statistics. Afterwards, the
African viewpoint of Ebola will be examined along with the implications of Western biomedical
thought as it was introduced into the treatment of the disease. This westernization of the disease
will then be explored in the form of the ‘mutation-contagion package’ that started in 1989 with
the Reston incident and was amplified by Hollywood in 1995. Finally, the ‘containment
package’ will be presented which used the heroism of doctors and scientists as well as the
‘othering’ of African natives to quell the panic of the general Western populace and transform
Ebola back into an ‘African’ problem. The Ebola Virus
Ebola’s earliest recorded outbreaks occurred in 1976, mainly concentrated in the cities of Nzara
and Maridi in Sudan. Almost immediately after, a second outbreak was seen in Zaire, its center
in Yambuku. By 1979 there were three outbreaks of Ebola attributed to two different strands,
both named after the countries in which they were first seen: E. Sudan and E. Zaire. After these
initial episodes, there were no new human cases seen for 15 years.8 During this time, there was
the discovery of a third strain that was extremely deadly to monkeys. The E. Reston strain was
described after a shipment of macaque monkeys started dying at alarmingly fast rates in a
holding facility located in Reston, Virginia. Upon the realization that the illness plaguing the
monkeys was Ebola related, government agencies took steps in preventing possible human
spread by monitoring people who had come into contact with the primates as well as euthanizing
the over 400 monkeys that were housed in the building. Despite close contact between handlers
and monkeys, there was no sign of the disease in humans.9 This incident was the main focus of
Richard Preston, The Hot Zone (New York: Random House, 1994): Pg. 20, Kindle Edition.
Ungar, “Hot Crises and Media Reassurance…”, Pg. 48 - 49
7
Ibid, Pg. 51
8
Xavier Pourrut et al., “The Natural History of Ebola…,” pg. 1006
9
“The Plague Fighters,” PBS NOVA, 1996
5
6
2
Richard Preston’s novel and the subsequent movies that were fashioned after it. Around 1995
there was a resurgence of Ebola in Zaire, almost immediately after the release of Preston’s novel and Warner Brother’s box office hit Outbreak. The reports of the viral infection lasted for about
three years before petering out in 1997. Since then, outbreaks of Ebola have occurred in
relatively limited areas and have only majorly affected large populations of animal species such
as gorillas, chimpanzees, and duikers.10
Filoviridae is the family of viruses that includes Ebola and the closely related Marburg
virus. Both are known to cause haemorrhagic fever which often starts with flu-like symptoms,
including fever and headaches. As the disease progresses many different bodily systems are
compromised such as: respiratory, vascular, neurological, and gastrointestinal. Symptoms
usually intensify and can manifest in a wide variety of ways such as nausea, nasal discharge,
chest pain, confusion, and in extreme cases coma. It is known as haemorrhagic fever due to the
loss of large quantities of blood from various areas of the body. Blood loss can occur at puncture
sites, the mucosal linings such as those of the mouth, nose and eyes, as well as internally.
Haemorrhages are severe and occur at the peak of illness, however they have been seen in fewer
than half of patients. Non-fatal cases improve around day six to eleven and generally make a full
recovery. 11 The deadliest known strains of Ebola are the E. Zaire strain, with an average
mortality rate of 60 – 90 percent, followed by E. Sudan at 40 – 60 percent. The Bundibugyo
strain has only one known outbreak, with 25 percent of reported cases dying. There are two other
described types of Ebola, E. Reston and E. Ivory Coast, the first has only been found to cause
illness in monkeys and the latter was only seen in one reported case which ended in the eventual
recovery of the patient.12
The natural host of the Ebola virus is still unknown, though suggested reservoirs include
bats and arthropods such as mosquitos. Transfer of the disease is often associated with the
handling of diseased remains, both animal and human. However, large scale outbreaks can often
be attributed to the use of dirty needles and unsanitary hospital conditions which greatly
increased the transmission of disease from person to person. The disease can enter the body in a
variety of ways such as skin abrasions, contact with a mucosal surface, or through the use of
shared medical equipment.13 All of the human-involved subtypes of Ebola tend to circulate in a
specific area around the African equatorial forest, no reported human cases have occurred
outside of Africa.14
African Views on Ebola
Treatment of Africa and its native people has a long and tension-filled history which is strongly
tied into its representation in Western culture as an incubator for disease, poverty, famine, and a
host of other terrible afflictions. During the Ebola hype these archaic stereotypes were once
Xavier Pourrut et al., “The Natural History of Ebola…,” pg. 1006 - 09
Heinz Feldmann and Thomas Geisbert, “Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever” The Lancet 377 (2011): pg. 851 , doi:
10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60667-8
12
Ibid, Pg. 852
13
Ibid
14
Xavier Pourrut et al., “The Natural History of Ebola…,” pg. 1013
10
11
3
again dragged to the surface with officials and tabloids honing in on the perceived insufficiencies
of Africa and how it was, as Joffe and Haarhoff summarized, ‘inherently disaster ridden’.15 One
of the major sources of blame that much of the media tended to reiterate was the danger of tribal
traditions and customs. Yet, the first human interaction with the disease was through the native
people, and when examined, the customs of the people were often associated with epidemic
control. In Uganda the viral disease was often linked with the spirit of Gemo, these spirits came
suddenly and caused many deaths in a short amount of time. The protocol that was implemented
in instances of Gemo could be considered a broad approach to epidemic control: the isolation of
patients, the ban of large gatherings, and the removal of the dead to somewhere far from the
village. Similarly, the people of the Republic of the Congo viewed Ebola as an illness that came
like the wind, or an opepe. Ways to prevent the spread of opepe included isolation of the ill,
closing off of the village, and the reduction of contact with the diseased individuals.16
However, with the introduction of Western mass media, the conducts associated with the
control of Ebola were largely ignored, whereas other cultural differences were magnified as
being the root cause of the illness. Some examples of ‘problematic’ traditions included the consumption of rainforest creatures such as monkeys and bats as well as their interactions with
the deceased. Though it was true that practices such as touching the dead as a sign of respect and
the nursing of sick family members contributed to the spread of Ebola, it was actually hospitals
that were identified as key amplifiers of the disease.17 Dr. Ali Khan, one of the epidemiologists
from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deployed to Kikwit and a
featured doctor in The Plague Fighters, at one point stated, “Cultural things are difficult
obviously.”18 His matter-of-factness reflected the attitudes popularized by the spread of Western
medical thought, it was the idea that the native people did not know what was best for them, and
in following their own cultural wisdom they were only creating more mayhem and difficulty. In
this way, traditional African views of Ebola were largely linked to Western disapproval and
traditional names like gemo or opepe were only used outside of the presence of international
teams.19 Stigmatization of African values became a large part of media as coverage on Ebola
increased, narrative such as, “Locals look on with amusement as the team cautiously handles animals local people eat for lunch.” emphasized the apparent ignorance of the African people to the dangers of the disease.20
With the introduction of international medical teams to the sites of more recent
epidemics, the native people began correlating Ebola deaths with the foreign workers. Those that
worked with the doctors, even local nurses, were being labeled by the disease. Their spouses
refused to eat with them, others would call them ‘Ebola people’, and some healthcare workers
15
Hélène Joffe and Georgina Haarhoff, “Representations of Far-Flung Illnesses: The Case of Ebola in Britain,” Social Science and Medicine 54 (2002): pg. 961, doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(01)00068-5
16
Bonnie L. Hewlett and Barry S. Hewlett, “Providing Care and Facing Death: Nursing During Ebola Outbreaks in
Central Africa,” Journal of Transcultural Nursing 16 (2005): pg. 292, doi: 10.1177/1043659605278935
17
Melissa Leach, “Time to Put Ebola into Context,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization (2010).
18
“The Plague Fighters”
19
Hewlett and Hewlett, “Providing Care and Facing Death…,” Pg. 292
20
“The Plague Fighters”
4
were even attacked simply for being associated with the disease.21 After this, Ebola was not just
an evil spirit, but also a type of curse that plagued hospitals and health professionals. Of course,
not all African people necessarily followed traditional thought, many people who lived in the
cities followed the biomedical model of disease and accepted that modern epidemic control
protocols would curb the spread of the disease. In fact, 60 percent of Ebola cases occurred in
urban areas where modern medicine was already known.22 So there was a dichotomy that existed
in the African view of disease, between the traditionalist view of gemo and opepe and the
modern medical view of the illness being caused by a virus. Yet, to split the African
understanding of Ebola into two viewpoints would be too simplistic, for there were also many
educated health care professionals who effectively incorporated the two ideas as well. Many
local nurses combined the two views in order to best work with their patients. In this instance,
Ebola was a combination of malevolent spirit and virus, where removal of the spirit involved
modern medical techniques.23 These framings of Ebola, however, did not evolve into the view of
“predator virus” until the intervention of Western mass media and their exaggeration of the
‘malicious’ nature of the disease.
Mutation-Contagion
“In 1989 Ebola made its way to the U.S., residents of this Washington D.C. suburb had no idea
that one of the world’s deadliest viruses had emerged in their midst.” was the introductory line to
the Reston incident in the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series The Plague Fighters.
Throughout the Reston clip, there was a heightened sense of impending disaster; with images of
dark hallways, screaming monkeys getting dragged out of their cages by people in scrubs and
surgical masks, and accompanied by a solemn narration. All of this foreboding was directly
juxtaposed with the scenes of children skating around outside, presumably nearby, oblivious and
innocent. The show only mentioned that Reston was not infectious to humans as part of a
warning, “This new strain of Ebola had shown the potential to spread through the air. Had it been
lethal in humans, it could have been catastrophic.”24 It was through depictions like these, and
many others, that Ebola gained the reputation of becoming the next big killer.
Viruses live in the grey area between living and non-living, however, much of Western
media went beyond scientific speculation, and often imbued the Ebola virus with human-like
purpose. They would portray the disease as active agents that were always on the hunt for the
next host. Richard Preston makes a direct comparison, “The more one contemplates the hot viruses, the less they look like parasites and the more they begin to look like predators.”25 Using
this form of anthropomorphism, media was able to shape Ebola into the hunter and the human as
Hewlett and Hewlett, “Providing Care and Facing Death…,” Pg. 295
Jared Jones, “Ebola, Emerging: The Limitations of Culturalist Discourses in Epidemiology,” Journal of Global
Health 1 (2011): http://www.ghjournal.org/jgh-print/spring-2011-issue/ebola-emerging-the-limitations-ofculturalist-discourses-in-epidemiology/, Accessed 12 November 2013
23
Hewlett and Hewlett, “Providing Care and Facing Death…,” pg. 292
24
“The Plague Fighters”
25
Preston, The Hot Zone, pg. 134
21
22
5
prey, helpless to the effects of the disease.26 In this way the problem of Ebola haemorrhagic fever
was attributed to a sentient, deadly ‘agent’, rather than to poor health practices that could be
improved with intervention.27 Instead, the human body was always under attack, with no control
over the disease, the virus always actively, “Searching for the next victim, until there’s nothing left to kill.”28 This predator did not attack without reason, however, according to some media
outlets Ebola was the result of human encroachment upon the wild environment. So not only was
the virus a predator but it was also a “punishment”.29
Befitting the predatory persona of Ebola virus many disturbing descriptions accompanied
the presentation of the disease, using the worst possible symptoms to describe the infected
patients. A study of reader responses to British tabloids and broadsheets about Ebola found that
readers often parroted the horrific allusions, using words like “squidged”, “mushy”, or the very common “liquefied”.30 Arguably, the most skilled depictions of Ebola were to be found in The
Hot Zone, Preston mastered the art of using appalling metaphors in order to describe the victims
of the virus. Many of his depictions were food related, “The black vomit is not really black, it is a speckled liquid of two colours, black and red, a stew of terry granules mixed with fresh red
arterial blood. It is haemorrhage, and it smells like a slaughterhouse.”31 While others were
largely military related, “Suddenly he goes into the last phase – the human virus bomb
explodes.”32 The combination of these factors illustrated the apparent nature of this viral
predator, it was as inconspicuous as the food we eat, but evolved into a very lethal weapon that
gruesomely destroyed the human body from the inside out. By utilizing metaphors that were very
familiar to the Western world, the depictions of Ebola were easily accepted as truth since they
could be vividly imagined. As such, a ‘Cuisinart effect’ was enacted where exaggerated fact and believable fiction were blended together resulting in very real apprehension and fear from the
public.33
Containment
When the public started to show these signs of a ‘grass roots’ panic, the media tended to change
tactic and try to stem the flow of fear and confusion they had created just before.34 In order to
achieve a change in public opinion, mass media transformed the role of the Ebola virus from a
mass killer into a poverty related disease that was limited to the African jungle. Most of the
26
Jeff D. Bass, “Hearts of Darkness and Hot Zones: The Ideologeme of Imperial Contagion in Recent Accounts of
Viral Outbreaks,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): pg. 441 , doi: 10.1080/00335639809384231
27
Rebecca A. Weldon, “The Rhetorical Construction of the Predatorial Virus: A Burkian Analysis of Nonfiction
Accounts of the Ebola Virus,” Qualitative Health Research 11 (2001): pg. 8, doi: 10.1177/104973201129118902
28
“Outbreak”, Warner Brothers Studios, (1995)
29
“Outbreak”
30
Joffe and Haarhoff, “Representations of Far-Flung Illnesses…,” pg. 963
31
Preston, The Hot Zone, pg. 15
32
Ibid, pg. 21
33
Iliana A. Semmler, “Ebola Goes Pop: The Filovirus from Literature into Film,” Literature and Medicine 17
(1998): http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/journals/literature_and_medicine/v017/17.1semmler.html, Accessed
12 November 2013
34
Ungar, “Hot Crises and Media Reassurance…,” pg. 37 - 38
6
containment package relied on ‘otherness’, at that point much of the media drew a clear
distinction between idealized Western medicine and impoverished, uneducated African culture.
A large part of this came from the elevation of the medical doctor or researcher into a heroic
figure that fought against the evil disease.35 Suddenly, it was no longer just a medical emergency
but a drama, “…the sufferers are victims, the scientists and physicians cast as the heroes, risking
their own lives by ignoring universal precautions because they care.”36 News outlets used this
correlation between healthcare officials and heroism to deflect the fears of the public by citing
authority figures, some of which included the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the CDC.
The Washington Post referred to a WHO authority that claimed Ebola was not an emergency in
terms of a wild spread of the disease, but rather a serious problem in the area it was located.
Along similar lines, the health official sources of the New York Times did not believe that the risk
of the disease spreading beyond Zaire was high.37 Usage of authorities and researchers as sources
of information helped to downplay the earlier sensationalism on the possibility of Ebola
spreading beyond the borders of Africa. Their accepted roles in Western society as medical
heroes gave them undisputed credibility.
Additionally, the media used aforementioned African traditions and apparent
inadequacies to convince the Western populace that the viral illness was due to the third world
environment found in the tropical regions. In this way, the media utilized ‘othering’ as a method for changing Ebola into an affliction that mostly affected the African people, and could not
possibly spread to the West. Common reasons presented for the proliferation of Ebola in African
nations included; lack of electricity, no running water, high illiteracy, and limited public health
or sanitation. Additionally, Kikwit was dismissively called a “large rural village” by The Plague
Fighters although it has generally been considered a city. They then go on to say that Ebola, “can find no better place than Kikwit”.38 Adding these comments together, a picture came together
where the African ‘condition’ was at blame for the spread of the virus. No solutions were ever given for these apparent problems that were often a consequence of the exploitation of Africa by
the Western nations.39 As Jared Jones stated, “poverty, inequality, and poor healthcare infrastructure remain outside the realm of conceivable intervention.” Instead they were seen as a
fundamentally African characteristic, and Ebola was their consequence.40 As a result, the disease
reverted back into a distinctly regional problem, framed as a result of underdeveloped nations,
the supposedly natural reservoir of these lethal illnesses.
Conclusion
Ebola haemorrhagic fever went through dramatic transformations during the late 20th century
from when it was first introduced in 1976 to the late 1990s. During the early outbreaks, Ebola
was largely ignored by the press and was mostly seen through an African or biomedical lens.
35
Bass, “Hearts of Darkness and Hot Zones...,” Pg. 431 - 432
Weldon, “The Rhetorical Construction…,” pg. 15 - 16
37
Ungar, “Hot Crises and Media Reassurance…,” pg. 49
38
“The Plague Fighters”
39
Semmler, “Ebola Goes Pop…”
40
Jones, “Ebola, Emerging…”
36
7
This persisted until the Reston incident of 1989 when the media was alerted to the possibility of
a lethal virus on Western shores, however, the catalysts for mass media hype on Ebola really
emerged in the mid-90s with the release of Outbreak and The Hot Zone. Not long after, news
outlets and other media sources began to shape the Ebola virus into a worldwide killer,
emphasizing a conscious and predatory nature. Once the media realized a panic may have been
building in the populace, the reports on the epidemic and virus were modified to no longer
become a threat to the Western nations. Ultimately, Ebola has been reshaped as a disease limited
to the poverty stricken, African equatorial rainforest regions and Western interest in the viral
illness has significantly decreased. However, heightened public attention to deadly diseases still
continues to this day with modern scares such as SARS. This interest in the seemingly morbid is
the result of human nature, with a fear and desire for knowledge emerging in the wake of a
possibly rapid as well as lethal disease.41 For now, the existence of deadly diseases will continue
to fascinate the public, and the continued reemergence of Ebola is very likely until a host and
effective treatment can be found. As we are reminded at the end of The Hot Zone, “Ebola had risen in these rooms, flashed its colours, fed, and subsided into the forest. It will be back.”42
Word Count: 3987
41
42
Hewlett and Hewlett, “Providing Care and Facing Death…,” pg. 297
Preston, The Hot Zone, pg. 409
8
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10