September 13, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Experts fear that Ebola will mutate and become spreadable via cough or sneeze
- Ebola is an RNA virus, meaning every time it copies itself, it mutates
- Most mutations mean nothing, but some could change the way the virus behaves
"It's the single greatest
concern I've ever had in my 40-year public health career," said Dr.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "I
can't imagine anything in my career -- and this includes HIV -- that
would be more devastating to the world than a respiratory transmissible
Ebola virus."
Osterholm and other
experts couldn't think of another virus that has made the transition
from non-airborne to airborne in humans. They say the chances are
relatively small that Ebola will make that jump. But as the virus spreads, they warned, the likelihood increases.
Every time a new person
gets Ebola, the virus gets another chance to mutate and develop new
capabilities. Osterholm calls it "genetic roulette."
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As of Friday, there have
been 4,784 cases of Ebola, with 2,400 deaths, according to the World
Health Organization, which says the virus is spreading at a much faster
rate now than it was earlier in the outbreak.
Ebola is an RNA virus,
which means every time it copies itself, it makes one or two mutations.
Many of those mutations mean nothing, but some of them might be able to
change the way the virus behaves inside the human body.
"Imagine every time you
copy an essay, you change a word or two. Eventually, it's going to
change the meaning of the essay," said Dr. C.J. Peters, one of the
heroes featured in "The Hot Zone."
That book chronicles the
1989 outbreak of Ebola Reston, which was transmitted among monkeys by
breathing. In 2012, Canadian researchers found that Ebola Zaire, which
is involved in the current outbreak, was passed from pigs to monkeys in
the air.
Dr. James Le Duc, the
director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of
Texas, said the problem is that no one is keeping track of the mutations
happening across West Africa, so no one really knows what the virus has
become.
One group of researchers
looked at how Ebola changed over a short period of time in just one
area in Sierra Leone early on in the outbreak, before it was spreading
as fast as it is now. They found more than 300 genetic changes in the
virus.
"It's frightening to
look at how much this virus mutated within just three weeks," said Dr.
Pardis Sabeti, an associate professor at Harvard and senior associate
member of the Broad Institute, where the research was done.
Even without becoming airborne, the virus has overwhelmed efforts to stop it.
The group Doctors
Without Borders says Monrovia, Liberia, needs 1,000 beds for Ebola
patients but has only 240, and it has had to turn patients away, sending
them back to neighborhoods where they could infect more people.
This week, a Pentagon spokesman said the United States is sending a 25-bed field hospital to Monrovia.
"A 25-bed hospital with
nobody to staff it? That's not the scale we need to be thinking about,"
Le Duc said. "It's an absolute embarrassment. When there was a typhoon
in the Philippines, the Navy was there in 48 hours and had billions of
dollars in resources."
Osterholm commended
groups like Doctors Without Borders but said uncoordinated efforts by
individual organizations are no match for Ebola spreading swiftly
through urban areas.
"This is largely
dysfunctional. Nobody's in command, and nobody's in charge," he said.
"It's like not having air traffic control at an airport. The planes
would just crash into each other."
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