Ebola ubiquity

[Joao Vasconcelos Costa]

Encarnacion Perez, Jr. wrote:
> 
> While all of the news reporters and scientists go on about the changing
> nature of Ebola Reston and other "Reston-like" Ebola, it is interesting
> to note that the monkeys in Alice Texas came from the Phillipines.
> Didn't the original Reston monkeys come from Africa?  If this is true
> then I think that we may have more of a problem than we realize.

It is not true. The Reston infected cynomolgus monkeys originated
in the Philippines. A Reston-like virus was also isolated in Italy
from a monkey imported from Philippines.

> Then again, if the Reston monkeys also came from the Phillipines, my
> argument is full of hot air.  But consider this, all of the other Ebola
> organisms have come from Africa (Zaire, Tai, Marburg) what is this coming
> out of the Phillipines?  How did it get there in the first place?  How
> similar is it to the African strains?  Is Ebola in other rain forests
> that we don't know?

-- 
*****   JOAO VASCONCELOS COSTA, MD, PhD
*****   Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia - Oeiras, Portugal
*****   mailto:jcosta at pen.gulbenkian.pt
*****   http://www.pen.gulbenkian.pt/v2/jvc.html