Imagine a child ill with a fever. Crying in pain with outstretched arms, the child approaches longingly for an embrace, a soothing hug. But what if it's Ebola? What is a mother to do? Naturally, a mother longs to comfort her child, but now she fears contracting Ebola herself. Does she cast her daughter away and refuse to touch or comfort her? This is the terrible predicament that people in West Africa are currently facing.

Ebola challenges and threatens West Africa – and now all of humanity. It preys on the goodness of humanity, sealing people off in isolation rooms and mandating distant contact through protective gear. Perhaps worst of all, Ebola kills the very caregivers whose heroic sacrifice is desperately needed — doctors, nurses, and parents. Many West African healthcare workers have died from Ebola, further diminishing impoverished hospitals and healthcare systems. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), currently is developing an Ebola vaccine, though it is not yet ready for release in patients.

On September 26, 2014, the CDC sent this alarming Ebola forecast in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report:

Without an increase in effective interventions (an Ebola vaccine), there could be 1.4 million cases of the disease in Africa within four months.

In the wake of this global tragedy, In Defense of Animals is exposing the causative connections between Ebola, bushmeat, and animal abuse which seem so obvious, but are almost entirely ignored by the media.

In 1999, IDA established the Sanaga-Young Chimpanzee Rescue Center, located in the Mbargue forest of the Central Province of Cameroon and named Dr. Sheri Speede director. 72 chimpanzees live at the sanctuary; they are orphans who watched the slaughter of their mothers for meat. Abandoned primate orphans have become “the new currency in a growing international trade,” The Bushmeat Crisis Task Force reports. Aging adult chimps have also found refuge at our sanctuary—from years spent chained in front of tourist hotels. Others less fortunate end up in logging or hunting camps, confined to makeshift cages in preparation for a “final sale” in cities, as commercial bushment. New arrivals at Sanaga-Young often come from deplorable conditions, showing visible scars—like broken limbs, smashed teeth, dehydrated and malnourished bodies, with open cuts from chains. All carry invisible scars from past traumas. But once at the Sanctuary, their lives unfold and renew — in their adopted family groups.

The Origins of Ebola

People in West and Central Africa consume many species of forest animals. Bats are often used in soups. Whole dead monkeys are sold openly in markets and prepared monkey meat is served in many restaurants. Flesh of endangered and legally protected chimpanzees and gorillas, considered a delicacy by some, is provided “under the table” at open markets and sold illegally to urban elite through special dealers. Collectively called "bushmeat," forest dwelling animals are butchered and eaten in small villages by people who would go hungry otherwise. However, huge quantities of bushmeat are also transported to urban areas and sold commercially to wealthier Africans — who consider it a delicacy. A small percentage of bushmeat is exported to immigrant communities in Europe and the United States. Research studies link Ebola with bushmeat–killing humans and chimpanzees alike.

Dead monkeys for sale in a bushmeat market in the town of Bertoua, Cameroon

Animal to human transmission:

Ebola is a zoonotic disease, meaning it is transferred from an animal to a human (also like HIV and SARS). Scientists have deduced a transmission scenario that looks like this: First, the virus lives inside a “healthy animal,” who harbors the virus without manifesting symptoms — labeled as the anatural host or reservoir. Most scientists think migrating fruit bats are suspect. One day a fruit bat eats part of a fruit that’s now infested with Ebola and then drops it. A few hours later, a chimpanzee discovers the Ebola-infected fruit and finishes it. One week later, the chimp is dead. A poor villager stumbles upon its carcass soonafter and carries home the dead body. While cutting up the carcass, a small drop infected with Ebola splashes onto his skin. Two days after the meal, the villager feels ill with flu-like symptoms — a headache and muscle pains. Later on that week, he vomits and has bloody diarrhea. On his eighth day ill, he is dead. Neighboring villagers wash his corpse in a traditional West African ceremony before burying him. Two weeks later, the diggers and some attendants who kissed the corpse die also, since Ebola that can live in a corpse for several days, so corpses can transmit Ebola. Once inside a symptomatic human, it is quite infectious, and spreads like wildfire from human to human.

Decimated Chimpanzee Populations and Speeding the Spread of Ebola

Chimpanzees also are stricken by Ebola — with recent dwindling populations, they are further decimated at the hands of humans. Besides pummeling chimpanzees and their populations, humans are responsible for destroying habitat. For example, multinational agricultural corporations clear forests to grow crops for export; logging and mining companies cut roads into once pristine forests, providing conduits for commercial hunters; and mining companies exhaust the mineral Coltan (used in cell phones, computers, chips, game consoles, and camcorders). These factors have exponentially increased the size of urban populations, further fueling demand for commercialized bushmeat while promoting lethal mutations in the virus, wider geographic distributions of the disease, and exponential growth of Ebola outbreaks… and seeding future Ebola outbreaks of more lethality. With each replication in an animal or human cell, Ebola mutates, perhaps enhancing its lethality and rate of disease infestation. Is this a matter of cause and effect—what’s reaped; now sowed.

Linking Ebola to Bushmeat is Part of the Puzzle

Now it is time to rise up against bushmeat trading: against Ebola and its cruelty — its disregard for life for both human and non-human primates. Now’s the time to strategically fight to eradicate this Ebola apocalypse that has been inflicted upon West Africa, America, and Spain — and possibly the rest of the world. Developed Western nations and those developing must learn about lethal linkage of Ebola and bushmeat. Then those who remain blind, or desensitized, to animal cruelty can begin to see this a cause and its effect — how humans killing animals relates to human death from Ebola. Hopefully, this pandemic will invigorate and stimulate a public outcry — one that denounces bushmeat trading, both locally and globally. Hopefully, this catastrophe will energize collaboration between different academic disciplines – veterinary medicine, human medicine, and ecology — and enable discovery of early predictors of new, more dangerous, emerging zoonotic diseases. Suffering brings insight. We must realize that as humans and non-humans we are interconnected.

As animal activists, we abhor animal cruelty, yet most Americans don’t understand the connection between the bushmeat, animal abuse, and disease transmission. Together, we must speak out against bushmeat trade to sustain human health and save endangered species. Through public opinion, we can pressure our politicians to take action. This deadly Ebola outbreak may provide an opportunity to educate the world about the dangers of bushmeat and to promote affordable protein substitutes available on a plant-based diet.

As we learn more about the serious consequences of the bushmeat trade, we will expand our circle of compassion to include West Africans and great apes suffering from Ebola, free ourselves from the nightmare of this disease, and restore balance. Albert Einstein eloquently said, “Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”

Marilyn Kroplick M.D. is president of In Defense of Animals. In 2011, IDA founder Dr. Elliot Katz handed over the torch to Dr. Kroplick, a trained child, adolescent, and board-certified adult psychiatrist and certified plant-based nutritionist. Dr. Kroplick has treated patients for infectious diseases in Asia, Afghani refugees in the Middle East, and hundreds of psychiatric patients across North America including in the Psychiatric Emergency Room of the Bronx Municipal Hospital, and also as founder of The Center for Attention Deficit Disorders. Dr. Kroplick has also given medical advice on Barbara Walters "The View," Hard Copy, Extra, America Talks Health, The Doctor Is In, The Jerry Springer Show, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan. In the sixties, Dr. Kroplick photographed social movements – civil rights, anti-war, and women’s rights – in the U.S., Cuba, and South America. Her activism was published in underground (activist) newspapers, books, and in a weekly column of the Village Voice, which won her a grant in photography from The National Endowment for the Arts in 1972.