Thirty years ago, scientists working at a lab facility in Reston, Virginia, scrambled to contain a deadly virus: Ebola. Monkeys that had been shipped to the lab from the Philippines were testing positive for the illness, which had never before been detected in the United States. As the monkeys became sick and began to die, officials established a protocol to try to prevent an outbreak. If the virus spread, the scientists believed, it would be a serious threat to public health. (Find out about the world’s second biggest outbreak of Ebola, which is currently raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

[My husband] Jerry and I grew up in small rural communities, and I went to veterinary school