This book had a great influence on me when I was about 13. It is an exciting true story about a terrible virus that started killing medical missionaries in Nigeria in 1969. It describes how doctors and scientists, all over the world, fought the virus that caused this terrible disease and eventually defeated it.
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This is an exciting story, and it is also a story of great courage as doctors work with suffering and contagious patients in hospitals, as scientists work with lethal viruses in modern labs, as other scientists catch rats, bats, and other possible carriers far out in remote African villages. At least one of the medical researchers was infected by this Lassa virus and paid the ultimate price, dying in the struggle to save others.
The most important thing I learned from this book is how you solve big, complex, important problems. You don't solve them with emotion, you don't solve them with cheering, or by attacking people who disagree with you, and you don't solve them with hope or with fear. You solve big problems by gathering facts, constructing hypotheses based on those facts, then testing your ideas against reality by gathering more facts, and continuing this process until you find an objective, verifiable answer.
This book had a great influence on me when I was 13 and it still shapes my approach to solving problems now, 40 years later. This is a great book and a book that everyone could enjoy and benefit from.
Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway
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