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Ebola and Climate Change: Are Humans Responsible for the Severity of the Current Outbreak?

Ebola and Climate Change: Are Humans Responsible for the Severity of the Current Outbreak?

by The Daily Eye Team August 19 2014, 7:46 am Estimated Reading Time: 1 min, 3 secs

The army base, a cut of cleared land amidst a thick, verdant, unnamed jungle, is filled with soldiers and locals, dead or dying of a mystery disease. A pile of bodies burns outside. At the sound of a U.S. army plane approaching, Americans and Africans both run out of the medical tents, arms raised to the sky in welcome and anticipation. But one man?s smile turns to horror when he realizes the airdropped package isn?t relief in the form of a cure or supplies, but instead another kind of solution. The bomb explodes, killing the men and devastating their arboreal surroundings; out of the wreckage run two white-headed capuchin monkeys.

This is the opening scene?ground zero?in the 1995 film Outbreak, in which an Ebola-like virus ultimately lands on U.S. soil and becomes an unstoppable killer. In the film, the virus is connected directly to the deforestation of the land enacted by western military: a local health care worker tells a U.S. army virologist, played by Dustin Hoffman, that the local ?juju man? believes ?the gods were awoken by their sleep by the man cutting down the trees where no man should be, and the gods got angry; this is their punishment.?

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Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri


Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film buff and an editor. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has written for the online magazine Film Companion. He is a consultant, writer and editor for the newly launched film website Cinemaazi.com. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems (published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).    


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