《埃博拉浩劫》，20年前的預言

《埃博拉浩劫》，20年前的預言

When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa began to escalate a few months ago, the writer Richard Preston was working on a children’s fantasy novel. He dropped that and called David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. “I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to Ebola,’ ” Mr. Preston said. “I’ve got to cover this.”

幾個月前，當埃博拉病毒在西非肆虐日甚之際，作家理查德·普雷斯頓(Richard Preston)正在創(chuàng)作一本兒童奇幻小說。他停下來，給《紐約客》雜志的主編戴維·雷姆尼克(David Remnick)打去電話。“我跟他說，‘我得回過頭去弄埃博拉，’”普雷斯頓說道。“我要去寫報道。”

Mr. Preston first incited public fears about Ebola 20 years ago with “The Hot Zone,” his thrillerlike narrative that details the virus’s origins and scientists’ struggle to understand and stop it. The book, which has sold 3.5 million copies, could perhaps be classified as dystopian nonfiction. Stephen King called it “one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” With fears about Ebola rising once more, “The Hot Zone” has been in high demand: Mr. Preston’s publisher has released 150,000 more copies in recent months, and the book has reappeared on the New York Times best-seller list and on Sunday ranked No. 23 on Amazon.

20年前，普雷斯頓的《埃博拉浩劫》一書引發(fā)了公眾對這種病毒的恐慌;他用類似驚悚小說的寫法，描繪了這種病毒的起源，以及科學家是如何奮力了解、阻止這種病毒的傳播。這本已經(jīng)售出350萬冊的圖書，或許可以劃入反烏托邦非虛構(gòu)類。史蒂芬·金(Stephen King)曾說，這本書“是我讀過的最嚇人的書之一”。伴隨埃博拉再次爆發(fā)的恐懼，《埃博拉浩劫》的銷量也隨之大增，普雷斯頓的出版商在最近幾個月加印了 15萬冊，該書再次登上了紐約時報暢銷書榜，周日的時候，它在亞馬遜的銷量榜上排在第23位。

This week, The New Yorker is publishing Mr. Preston’s latest reporting on the virus, a dispatch about the efforts to sequence its genome intertwined with a narrative about a doctor’s doomed effort to treat the disease on the front lines. In a telephone interview, Mr. Preston spoke about his decades-long quest to understand the virus. These are excerpts from the conversation.

本周，《紐約客》將發(fā)表普雷斯頓對于埃博拉病毒的最新報道，該文描繪了科學家如何給這種病毒的基因組進行測序，還穿插了一名大夫在一線如何治療這種疾病卻注定失敗的故事。在電話采訪中，普雷斯頓談到自己數(shù)十年來一直想要了解這種病毒。以下是訪談內(nèi)容的摘錄。

Q. It has been more than two decades since you started writing about Ebola. How has your understanding of the virus evolved?

問：自從你開始寫埃博拉病毒以來，二十多年過去了，你對這種病毒的理解有了哪些變化?

A. It’s changed a great deal. We know a lot more about Ebola in the intervening 20 years. Initially, there were a lot of fears that Ebola could mutate to become the airborne Andromeda strain that would wipe us all out. With what we know now about the genetic code of the virus, Ebola does not travel through the air in airborne form and is very unlikely to mutate that way. Another thing that’s been learned about Ebola is the mutation rate. The virus is continually mutating as it’s moving through the human population. It’s testing out its new environment. One of the biggest concerns is that all of our drugs and tests and vaccines for Ebola need to be adjusted. We can adjust the tests, but we need to watch how the virus is doing. We have a whole bunch of new tools that we never had in the 1990s. We now have the ability to use genetic sequencing machines to read the code of the virus again and again. This is like making a video of the virus moving in real time. We now have our eyes on the enemy.

答：變化挺大的。在過去的20年里，我們對埃博拉的了解增加了不少。一開始的時候，很多人擔心埃博拉會出現(xiàn)變異，成為經(jīng)空氣傳播的“安德洛墨達菌株”，會把我們?nèi)祟惾o滅了。隨著對這種病毒的基因序列的了解，我們現(xiàn)在知道埃博拉不會通過空氣傳播，而且?guī)缀醪豢赡艹霈F(xiàn)這種變異。我們對埃博拉的另一個了解，就是它的突變率。這種病毒在人類的傳播過程中，不停地突變。這是在對新環(huán)境做調(diào)適。人們最大的一個擔憂是，我們針對埃博拉的所有藥、試劑和疫苗，都得做相應調(diào)整。調(diào)整試劑倒不難，但是我們需要知道病毒在做怎樣的變化。我們現(xiàn)在擁有的許多新工具，是上世紀九十年代完全沒有的。我們現(xiàn)在有能力使用基因測序儀來反復讀取這種病毒的遺傳密碼。這就像是拿著攝像機對著正在運動的病毒，我們現(xiàn)在置敵人與眼皮之下。

Q. Some of your descriptions of the virus and its symptoms in “The Hot Zone” have been called inaccurate and hyperbolic. Are you planning to release an updated version of “The Hot Zone” with information related to the current crisis?

問：《埃博拉浩劫》中對于這種病毒及癥狀的描述，有人認為是不準確的，有夸張在里面。你有沒有計劃把與當下危機相關(guān)的信息加入進去，推出修訂版的《埃博拉浩劫》?

A. Yes, I am dying to update the book. I want to make the clinical picture of the virus more clear and accurate. In the original “Hot Zone,” I have a description of a nurse weeping tears of blood. That almost certainly didn’t happen. When a person has Ebola, the eyes can turn brilliant red from blood vessels leaking and blood oozing out of the eyelid. That’s horrifying, but it’s not someone with tears of blood running down their face. I want to fix that. The other thing that’s happening with Ebola today is there have been more outbreaks, and virologists are constructing a tree showing how they are related. The names of the viruses and the relationships have changed, and I want to get that into “The Hot Zone.” Finally, I’m going to put in an introduction in which I place the story of “The Hot Zone” in today’s context.

答：的確，我很想對這本書做修正。我想讓這種病毒的臨床描繪更加的清晰、準確。在老版的《埃博拉浩劫》中，我寫道一個護士流血淚的情節(jié)。幾乎可以肯定，這是不會發(fā)生的事情。在感染了埃博拉病毒后，眼睛會因為血管破裂而變得鮮紅，而且會有血從眼瞼滲出來。這非?？膳?，但不會出現(xiàn)血淚在臉上滑落的情形。我想對這段進行修正。另外一個與埃博拉有關(guān)的、目前正在發(fā)生的事情是，出現(xiàn)了更多的爆發(fā)病例，病毒學家正在構(gòu)筑樹狀家譜圖，把它們之間的關(guān)聯(lián)呈現(xiàn)出來。許多病毒的名字以及之間的關(guān)系都發(fā)生了改變，我都想放進《埃博拉浩劫》。最后一點，我將把《埃博拉浩劫》的故事放在今天這個大背景下，寫一篇序言。

Q. There are reports that “The Hot Zone” is being developed into a TV series for Fox. Will it be based on the book and the earlier outbreak you covered, or the current crisis?

問：有許多報道說，?？怂挂选栋２├平佟犯木幊梢徊侩娨曔B續(xù)劇。它是以這本書以及你早些時候?qū)υ摬《颈l(fā)的報道為基礎(chǔ)，還是當下的危機為基礎(chǔ)?

A. I feel pretty confident that they’re going to want to move the story into the current situation. Fox bought the rights to the book way back when, and there was this attempt by Fox to make a movie out of “The Hot Zone,” and it tended tragically in a Hollywood disaster involving Robert Redford and Jodie Foster and Ridley Scott. But the rights have been sitting at Fox ever since. The original screenwriter for the Fox movie and the producer Lynda Obst teamed up and have proposed a TV series to Fox.

答：我很肯定它們是想把這個故事放到當下的情境中。?？怂购茉缇唾I下了這本書的改編權(quán)，然后想把它拍成電影，最后卻不幸變成了一場好萊塢的災難，把羅伯特·雷德福(Robert Redford)、朱迪·福斯特(Jodie Foster)和雷德利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)都給牽扯進來。但改編權(quán)一直在?？怂沟氖稚稀Ｄ遣侩娪霸瓉淼木巹『椭破肆者_·奧布斯特(Lynda Obst)搭起班子，提出給福克斯拍一部連續(xù)劇。

Q. Will the show be fictional or based on your reporting?

問：那這部劇集究竟是虛構(gòu)的，還是以你的報道為藍本?

A. It’s been the impulse in Hollywood to fictionalize it. I keep telling them: “Don’t do that. Don’t turn it into another predictable Hollywood drama.”

答：好萊塢總有瞎編的沖動。我一直跟他們講，“不要這樣。不要把它變成又一部老套的好萊塢式的戲。”

Q. You wrote about the threat of Ebola decades ago, and the fear sort of faded. Is it surreal to see it reappear so dramatically and so close to home?

問：二十年前，你就寫到了埃博拉的威脅，那種恐懼后來算是消退了。但現(xiàn)在看到它引人注目地重新爆發(fā)，而且距離我們?nèi)绱酥?，是不是有一種不真實的離奇感?

A. It’s wrenching. We’re getting a feel for the magnitude of human suffering and fear, and it’s awful. I was very surprised when this huge outbreak began and seemed to get bigger and bigger. I’d turned away from writing about Ebola and wrote about the world’s largest living things, the Redwood trees, and most recently, I’ve been writing a fantasy novel for kids that I’ve been working on for years.

答：還蠻痛苦的。我們對人類的苦難和恐懼有了新的認識，真是駭人。這次大規(guī)模爆發(fā)，令我很驚訝，而且它的范圍似乎越來越大。我已經(jīng)很長時間沒有寫過埃博拉病毒了，之前在寫世界上最大的活物——紅杉樹，最近的寫作情況是，我一直在寫一本兒童奇幻小說，寫了好幾年。

Q. Besides its extreme fatality rate, what’s so terrifying about Ebola?

問：除了極高的死亡率，還有什么令埃博拉如此可怕?

A. Here’s what’s terrifying about Ebola. Ebola is invisible. It’s a monster without a face. With the science that we have now, we can perceive Ebola as being not one thing but as a swarm, and the swarm is moving through the human population and expanding its numbers. It has the qualities of a monster. It’s the most important character in “The Hot Zone.” It’s the nonhuman other that all human beings are contending with in many different ways.

答：那我就來說說埃博拉病毒的可怕之處吧。這種病毒是肉眼看不見的。它是一個無臉怪獸。運用我們現(xiàn)有的科學技術(shù)，我們可以把埃博拉當成一串而非單一的病毒，它在人群中移動，同時數(shù)量越變越多。它具有怪獸的特征。在《埃博拉浩劫》里最重要的角色就是它。它是全體人類通過各種方式與之搏斗的非人生物。