{"id":15528,"date":"2020-09-15T13:59:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T17:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=15528"},"modified":"2020-09-27T15:17:21","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T19:17:21","slug":"dan-dalgard-the-hot-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/dan-dalgard-the-hot-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Dalgard: Discovering the Outbreak at Reston"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who is Dan Dalgard? What was his role in containing the Ebola outbreak at the Reston monkey house<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Dalgard was a consulting veterinarian at the holding facility where the Ebola outbreak fo 1989 took place. Dalgard helped sound the alarm, and later handled the outbreak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about Dan Dalgard, and his role in containing and researching the Reston Ebola outbreak<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Dan Dalgard and the Mystery Disease at the Reston Facility<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The monkey colony manager, Bill Volt, considered the fact that the building\u2019s air system was broken, and the heat was running high. The relentless heat could have put a strain on the monkeys and caused the deaths\u2014but that didn\u2019t explain why most of the deaths had been in just one room, Room F. Volt called Hazleton\u2019s consulting veterinarian, Dan Dalgard, to take a look at the monkeys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Dalgard inspected the remaining monkeys in Room F, he found two that were sick and feverish. Both died that night, and when Volt and Dalgard dissected the monkey corpses the next day, they found that the monkeys\u2019 spleens were swollen and there was blood in their intestines. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More monkeys in Room F died and Dalgard continued to investigate. None of the monkeys seemed terribly ill, besides having enlarged, tough spleens. However, Dalgard didn\u2019t recognize that their spleens weren\u2019t simply swollen\u2014they had actually become <\/em>solid blood clots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dalgard removed a piece of spleen and collected a throat swab from one of the dead monkeys, and he sent it to Peter Jahrling, a civilian virologist at USAMRIID.<\/strong> Dalgard believed the disease killing these monkeys was simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF), which was fatal for monkeys but didn\u2019t affect humans. After some testing, Jahrling tentatively agreed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Dalgard got the verdict from USAMRIID, he killed the rest of the monkeys in Room F, in order to stop the disease from spreading to monkeys in other rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days later, Dalgard returned to the Reston facility to find that five monkeys had died in a room two doors down from Room F. This was alarming: Not only was the disease spreading, but it could skip rooms, suggesting it could be airborne<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahrling and Geisbert Sound the Alarm<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Jahrling alerted Colonel Clarence Peters, the chief of USAMRIID\u2019s disease-assessment division. Peters, Jahrling, and Geisbert considered the possibilities<\/a>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n