Blog #1

One ethical dilemma that is faced in the novel The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is when Nancy Jaxx is discriminated for being a woman and wanting to work with a Level 4 hot agent. Nancy Jaxx had tried to work with Level 3 agents but she wasn't qualified due to issues with her vaccinations. This led her to only being able to volunteer to participate with the deadly Level 4 agents. Nancy volunteered to participate in Gene Johnson's Ebola project as a pathologist. People in the Institute had issues with Jaxx participating in this project due to the fact that she was a married woman with children. They claimed she might panic, that she had clumsy hands, that she might cut herself or stick herself with a contaminated needle or stick someone else. They made it seem like her clumsy hands were the issue when her gender was the real issue. All of this happened because she was a female. Her head superior, Tony Johnson, talked to her about the situation to get her side of this dilemma. She said that she didn't want any special favors because of her gender. Before when she applied for the pathologist position, she was compared to a plow horse by a fellow male employee. She stood up for herself and eventually was reconsidered for the position. Tony gave her the job as the pathologist for the Ebola program and decided to have hawk eyes on her and her clumsy hands until he knew she was right for the job.