"Blood in the Air: The Secret History of How Military Scientists at
Fort Detrick Spent Thirty Years Teaching Ebola to Kill Through the Lungs"
by Milan Adams
Excerpt: "Late October in northern Virginia carries a specific quality of light, thin and metallic, as if the sun itself has begun to withdraw from the coming winter. On the morning of October 30, 1989, this light fell across the loading dock of a commercial building on the outskirts of Reston, Virginia, where a freight truck from John F. Kennedy International Airport had arrived after driving through the night. The building belonged to Hazelton Research Products, a company that imported nonhuman primates for American scientific laboratories, and the truck carried one hundred wooden crates from the Philippines, each containing crab-eating macaques captured from the forests of Mindanao, transported by air through Amsterdam, and finally to this anonymous address where they would spend thirty days in quarantine before being sold to researchers across the country.
The macaques that emerged from those crates on that Monday morning could not have known that they had already been exposed to something lethal during their journey, that a virus had traveled with them across three continents, that their destination was not merely another cage but a historical moment that would change how humanity understood one of the most feared pathogens on earth. They were simply animals, frightened, dehydrated, huddled in corners of crates that smelled of urine and fear. Workers in blue coveralls moved them into a holding room designated with the letter F, a space with concrete floors, stainless steel cages stacked five high, and a ventilation system that connected to adjacent rooms through ductwork that would soon become evidence in an epidemiological mystery.
Within seventy-two hours, the first deaths occurred. Not the gradual decline of illness that veterinarians recognize, but sudden collapse. A macaque found in the morning hanging from the cage bars, motionless, blood crusted around its nostrils. Another discovered in the corner of its cage, having hemorrhaged from its rectum through the night. By November 7, when Hazelton’s staff began documenting the pattern, they noted symptoms that defied their experience: epistaxis, hematemesis, bloody diarrhea, and most disturbingly, blood that refused to clot when drawn for testing, remaining liquid in collection tubes where it should have gelled within minutes of contact with air.
Thomas Geisbert, a twenty-seven-year-old civilian researcher employed at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland, received a phone call on November 13. Geisbert was completing his doctoral dissertation in microbiology while working full-time at USAMRIID’s electron microscopy unit, and he had developed a reputation for skill in identifying filoviruses - the family that includes Ebola and Marburg - from tissue samples. The call came from Peter Jahrling, a senior USAMRIID virologist who had been contacted by Hazelton’s veterinary staff. Something unusual was killing monkeys in Reston. Could Geisbert examine samples?
The tissue arrived that afternoon. Geisbert processed them through the negative-staining protocol he had perfected, applying phosphotungstic acid to viral particles and examining them under transmission electron microscopy at 50,000x magnification. What he saw in the darkroom that evening, developing the photographic plates by hand, stopped his breath. Filamentous particles, some straight, some curved into the distinctive shepherd’s crook shape that characterizes filoviruses. Ebola, or perhaps Marburg. In Virginia. In monkeys. In a commercial quarantine facility with connections to the international primate trade.
By November 28, when Geisbert’s identification was confirmed by additional testing at USAMRIID and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the situation had deteriorated. Mortality in Room F had exceeded fifty percent, and more disturbingly, animals in adjacent rooms - Room H, Room J - were showing signs of illness despite never having shared cages with infected monkeys, never having touched contaminated blood, never having been handled by the same staff without protective equipment. The only connection between these animals was air. The ventilation system that maintained negative pressure and filtered exhaust air nonetheless recirculated portions of the supply air between rooms, and viral particles small enough to remain suspended had traveled through ductwork, establishing infection in new hosts through the respiratory route.
Colonel David Huxsoll, commander of USAMRIID, faced a decision. The building in Reston was not a military facility. It was a commercial operation in a suburban office park thirty miles from Washington, D.C. Yet the threat required military containment protocols. On December 7, 1989, Huxsoll authorized Operation Reston - the military takeover of a civilian facility. Soldiers in protective gear joined civilian veterinarians. Two hundred macaques were euthanized over three days. Some received lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital. Others were placed in carbon dioxide chambers. Their bodies were triple-bagged in plastic biohazard pouches, loaded into military vehicles with refrigerated cargo compartments, and transported to Fort Detrick where they were incinerated at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures sufficient to destroy viral RNA."
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