As the March 10 opening of the cinema thriller "Outbreak" approaches, Dr. Fred Murphy recalls with a chill a real outbreak six years ago, when a deadly virus appeared in a colony of imported research monkeys at a quarantine facility in Virginia. Murphy, now dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, was then director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control. An authority on viruses, Murphy was the first person to capture a picture of the "Ebola" virus with an electron microscope. The picture was used in the highly fictionalized film "Outbreak" and hangs on the wall of Murphy's UC Davis office. The Ebola virus, which caused hundreds of human deaths in the late 1970s during two African epidemics, killed only research monkeys in the 1989 U.S. outbreak. Although six animal caretakers were infected with the virus, they never developed symptoms of the disease. Apparently the virus that entered the United States had mutated into a much more benign strain, deadly to monkeys but harmless to humans, says Murphy. While the movie "Outbreak" engenders fear over deadly exotic diseases, the real Ebola virus outbreak dramatically illustrates the need for increased attention to the whole area of "emerging diseases," which encompasses a host of ailments ranging from AIDS to the Hantavirus, says Murphy. Murphy is available for interviews related to "Outbreak." He will be out of the state from March 11-15.