One ethical dilemma in the novel The Hot Zone is animal cruelty. In the novel the main animals that seems to be put through all the animal cruelty are monkeys. In The Hot Zone, scientist are using monkeys to test different medicines to see if they work against Ebola. In order to do so, the scientist need to infect the monkeys with the disease. This is causing the monkeys to go through excruciating pain, while they sit and wait to die from the disease. In the book, most of the monkeys have already died from the disease and the ones that have not are slowly dying anyways. Nancy Jaxx and Mr. Johnson are both scientist that work with these primates. They see hurting the monkeys as a way to help the human kind. Nancy Jaxx did say at one point she felt bad for the animals that were suffering, but she didn’t want her emotions to get in the way of her work. Not only were the monkeys in the book having experiments done on them, hundreds of other monkeys were being sent all of the world in tight crates. This is just one ethical dilemma faced in The Hot Zone.