How the most famous Ebola outbreak book got aspects of the disease so wrong

Watch what the Ebola virus does inside the body in order to spread and survive

Once infected, the virus targets the body's immune cells, spreading the infection throughout the body. Patients exhibit severe flu-like symptoms. Ebola then targets the liver, which produces proteins that help blood clot, and the adrenal glands, which control blood pressure. The immune system may overreact to the viral invasion, releasing a cytokine storm that can result in shock, multiple organ failure, and death.

Three Ebola species are responsible for most large outbreaks of the disease, yet the only approved Ebola vaccine is known to work against just one of them.

Watch what the Ebola virus does inside our cells and organs in order to spread and survive.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016

Frontline traced how the outbreak started and spread across West Africa. documenting first-hand accounts and patient experiences. This Ebola outbreak was the deadliest to date, resulting in over 11,000 deaths.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak is hampered by a lack of vaccine against the species of the virus, heightening the need for rapid tests to aid in disease control

Clinics in the Democratic Republic of Congo saw patients with Ebola symptoms months before the disease was identified. The identification lag was due to inadequate diagnostics that could not accurately or quickly identify the virus's myriad species. Contact tracing and better diagnostics will be required to tamp down the outbreak.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak is hampered by a lack of vaccine against the species of the virus, heightening the need for rapid tests to aid in disease control.

Watch how viruses like Ebola can spill over from animals to humans—and vice-versa.

Ebola's natural reservoir species are likely bats

But the virus doesn't seem to sicken the animals, so capturing an infected bat and performing necessary tests has remained challenging. Though many scientists believe fruit bats are the reservoir species for the virus, Ebola viral RNA fragments were detected in a greater long-fingered bat captured in 2016 in Liberia. The species isn't a fruit bat—it roosts in caves and feeds on insects. The scientist behind the discovery states that he believes the virus likely infects multiple host species and that the hosts may differ regionally. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Ebola species have historically been named after the places where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents of those areas, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda

This occurred with Ebola Zaire (now the DRC), Sudan, and Bundibugyo, a region in western Uganda composed largely of cocoa farmers. Uganda's link to the Bundibugyo virus is that the species was discovered there almost 20 years ago, in a November 2007 outbreak.

Watch the cumbersome, but necessary, precautions healthcare workers must take to care for and protect themselves while caring for Ebola patients.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

Hit show 'The Last of Us' was based on the real-life Cordyceps fungus

Though it depicted a fictional world with a collapsed society due to a fungal pandemic, this television series (based on an earlier video game) helped raise awareness about fungal threats. It even prompted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to publicly comment on it—clarifying the show’s plausibility. The mind-controlling fungal species in the show is based on a real-life Cordyceps species, a fungus that modifies its host’s behavior before killing it.

What are zoonotic diseases?

Interspecies interactions are a breeding ground for disease transmission. This basic background information on zoonotic disease from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chronicles the different ways humans can get sick, identifies what groups are particularly vulnerable, and offers links to other resources.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, readers returned to Camus' 'The Plague'

The 1947 novel, about a city in Algeria that enacts a city-wide quarantine to battle a deadly outbreak, captured readers' attention in the early months of 2020. In the UK, over 2,000 copies of the book were sold in March of that year, over six times what it had sold the month before.

One doctor argued vampires were based on a real disease

At a conference in 1985, Canadian biochemist David H. Dolphin posited that stories of vampires and werewolves had a real-world origin. He argued that porphyria could have caused sufferers to seek out blood, as well as experience light sensitivity and an aversion to garlic. More than one article in the 1990s discredited this take.

Dr. William Gorgas eradicated yellow fever in Panama, crucial to canal construction

The disease was one of the factors hampering the French effort to build the canal. Gorgas' experience elsewhere in the Caribbean had taught him that good drainage and quaranting patients were essential, and he would eventually apply mosquito prevention tactics on a mass scale.

Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood,' a pioneer of the true crime genre, isn't wholly accurate

The nonfiction novel "In Cold Blood" influenced true crime's narrative and investigative bend and was supposedly only 92% accurate. Journalist Ben Yagoda reflects on its accuracy after finding the fact-checking file for the four-part series published before the story was converted into hardback. Yagoda says the inaccuracies are "especially striking" because the story was originally published in one of the magazines credited with establishing fact-checking as a practice. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Hundreds of vulnerable Chicago residents died in 1995 during a long-lasting heat wave

Eric Klinenberg wrote a book diving into the specifics of the heat wave. His book, detailing the stories and context fueling more than 700 deaths during just one summer week, helps readers understand how social infrastructure lapses, power outages, and ineffective heat responses led to so many deaths.

Variola: the second-deadliest virus on Earth

Because it was declared eradicated in 1980, many forget smallpox is one of history's deadliest diseases—in its final century, it's estimated to have claimed 500 million lives. This 11-minute video from production studio Kurzgesagt takes a look at...

Limited transparency soon after Chernobyl made it a source of conspiracy theories

Some rumors about the event became perceived as more reliable than the Soviet mass media, which had omitted key information during the early days of uncertainty. The resulting theories included CIA involvement in the disaster, three-headed birds, aliens, and a weaponized earthquake.

Learn the history and science of influenza in 'This Podcast Will Kill You'

In their flu episode, cohosts Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke unpack influenza’s biology, history, and impact—explaining everything from past pandemics to modern vaccines, all with their trademark mix of science and storytelling.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

'Freakonomics' celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2025

The book 'Freakonomics' arguably changed the business landscape when it came out, and has since evolved into other forms of media and a cultural phenomenon.

Six of history's most unethical human experiments, from deliberate flu exposure to withholding syphilis treatment

Some of the progress made in mental health treatment, vaccines, blood transfusions, and more came about before the advent of consent and ethics committees, resulting in serious physical and psychological harm that participants in studies were not even anticipating.

'Jaws' creators regret making sharks the monsters

Both Peter Benchley, the author of the original 1974 novel, and Steven Spielberg, the director of the blockbuster film based on it, acknowledge that the film's popularity has led to the stigmatization of the mostly harmless creatures.

Nonfiction books have been struggling to sell in the mid-2020s

In the early 2020s, readers sought out nonfiction books to help explain prominent current events, such as the first presidency of Donald Trump and the BLM movement. That interest has since waned, as publishers note that readers have lately shown a preference for escapism and gather their information from podcasts.

A fake vaccine campaign was used to locate Osama bin Laden, fueling vaccine distrust

As part of the intelligence operation to find bin Laden in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency recruited a Pakistani doctor who ran a fake hepatitis B vaccine campaign and obtained DNA samples from bin Laden. News of this fake campaign fueled further distrust of healthcare workers, attacks on them, and stymied efforts to vaccinate against polio in the region.

Time magazine ran a cover story titled 'The End of the World as We Know it?' in January 1999

In January 1999, Time published a dramatic Y2K cover with apocalyptic imagery and dire headlines. The portrayal likely exacerbated public fear and magnified the crisis in the popular imagination, turning a technical issue into a cultural panic.

Charles Darwin studied goose bumps by scaring zoo animals in London with a stuffed snake

Read the famous naturalist’s work from the late 1800s, detailing how he sought to draw comparisons between how animals and humans respond to fear. As part of that work, he exposed monkeys and a peccary to a stuffed snake and noted the animals’ hair-raising fear response.

Stephen King once shelved his own book

Stephen King's "Rage" follows a high school student who kills a teacher and holds classmates hostage. Originally published in 1977, the book was later linked to several school shootings. In the late '90s, King asked his publisher to pull it from print.

Most penicillin allergy diagnoses are wrong

A Freakonomics Radio episode investigates why so many people mistakenly believe they’re allergic to penicillin. This widespread misdiagnosis leads to costlier, less effective treatments and contributes to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

'Tomato flu' outbreak in India turned out to be HFMD

An illness initially dubbed "tomato flu" in 2022 that sickened children in Kerala, India, with symptoms typical of hand, foot, and mouth disease turned out to be that—not a new ailment. A letter published in the prestigious journal The Lancet had initially described the illness as "a new virus" but at least some of the children ultimately tested positive for one of the viruses that causes HFMD, so it wasn't a new condition after all. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Urushiol, the oily toxin in poison ivy, can remain allergenic on clothing for years.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'