IN THE film Outbreak, US Army doctor Sam Daniels, played by Dustin
Hoffman, saves the town of Cedar Creek and the entire US from certain death by
an Ebola-like virus. The dynamic Daniels finds a monkey carrying the virus,
draws off some serum, then makes enough of the stuff to treat the town and save
his ex-wife—all in the space of a day.
While the method behind Daniels’s frenzied activity may have been true to
life, the timeframe certainly was not. Researchers searching for what triggers
childhood diabetes can only dream of such powers. The notion of a virus…
