"Richard Preston - The Hot Zone2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

flashlight pointed down a dark hole. It gives a narrow but startling view
of the larger phenomenon of the origin and spread of tropical viruses. He
told me that some of the Marburg monkeys were trapped in a group of
islands in Lake Victoria known as the Sese Islands. The Senses are a
low-lying forested archipelago in the northwestern part of Lake Victoria,
an easy boat ride from Entebbe. The isle of plagues may have been
situated among the Senses or near them. Mr. Jones does not recall the
name of the hot island. He says it is close to Entebbe. At any rate, Mr.
Jones's then-boss, the Entebbe monkey trader, had arranged a deal with
villagers in the Sese Islands to buy monkeys from them. They regarded the
monkeys as pests and were happy to get rid of them, especially for money.
So the trader was obtaining wild monkeys from Sese Islands, and if the
animals proved to be sick, he was releasing them on another island
somewhere near Entebbe. And some monkeys from the isle of plagues seemed
to be ending up in Europe.
In papyrus reeds and desolate flatlands on the western shore of
Lake Victoria facing the Sese Islands, there is a fishing village called
Kasensero. You can see the Sese Islands from the village. Kasensero was
one of the first places in the world where AIDS appeared. Epidemiologists
have since discovered that the northwestern shore of Lake Victoria was one
of the initial epicenters of AIDS. It is generally believed that AIDS
came originally from African primates, from monkeys and apes, and that it
somehow jumped out of these animals into the human race. It is thought
that the virus went through a series of very rapid mutations at the time
of its jump from primates to humans, which enabled it to establish itself
successfully in people. In the years since AIDS virus emerged, the
village of Kasensero has been devastated. The virus has killed a large
portion of the inhabitants. It is said that other villages along the
shores of Lake Victoria have been essentially wiped off the map.
The villagers of Kasensero are fishmen who were, and are, famous
as smugglers. In their wooden boats and motorized canoes they ferried
illegal goods back and forth across the lake, using the Sese Islands as
hiding places. One can guess that if a monkey trader were moving monkeys
around Lake Victoria, he might call on the Kasensero smugglers or on their
neighbors.
One general theory for the origin of AIDS goes that, during the
late nineteen-sixties, a new and lucrative business grew up in Africa, the
export of primates to industrialized countries for use in medical
research. Uganda was one of the biggest sources of these animals. As the


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monkey trade was established throughout central Africa, the native workers
in the system, the monkey trappers and handlers, were exposed to large
numbers of wide monkeys, some of which were carrying unusual viruses.
These animals, in turn, were being jammed together in cages, exposed to
one another, passing viruses back and forth. furthermore, different
species of monkeys were mixed together. It was a perfect setup for an