A top scientist worries that Ebola has mutated to become more contagious
Updated by Julia Belluz on October 13, 2014, 9:00 a.m. ET 
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6959087/ebola-outbreak-virus-mutated-airborne
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Peter Jahrling now serves as a chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he runs the emerging viral pathogens section.
When his team has run tests on patients in Liberia, they seem to carry a much higher "viral load." In other words, Ebola victims today have more of the virus in their blood — and that could make them more contagious.
"I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running [tests]. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing. It turns out that in limited studies with the evacuated patients, they continued to express virus in blood and semen. What does that mean? Right now, we just don't know."
"I want to know if this virus is intrinsically different from the one we have seen before, if it is a more virulent strain. We are using tests now that [we]
weren't using in the past, but there seems to be a belief that the virus load is higher in these patients [today] than what we have seen before. If true, that's a very different bug."