Rabid (36 page)

Read Rabid Online

Authors: Bill Wasik,Monica Murphy

Chapter 7: The Survivors

182  
As she sat beside her mother:
Jeanna Giese’s personal Web site,
http://site.jeannagiese.com/My_Story.html
.

182  
Later, Giese showed the tiny wound:
“The Girl Who Survived Rabies,”
Extraordinary People,
Discovery Channel (2006).

187  
it had been shown in a 1992 study:
Brian Paul Lockhart, Noel Tordo, and Henri Tsiang, “Inhibition of Rabies Virus Transcription in Rat Cortical Neurons with the Dissociative Anesthetic Ketamine,”
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
36, no. 2 (1992): 1750–55.

188  
At 10:0
0
p.m.
on the evening of October 10, 1970:
Michael A. Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies: A Case Report,”
Annals of Internal Medicine
76, no. 6 (1972): 931–42.

188  
Over the next few days, Winkler’s condition:
Ibid.

189  
Although no virus was isolated:
Ibid.

189  
After days spent motionless in a coma:
Ibid.

189  
Winkler’s clinicians—led by Dr. Michael A. Hattwick:
Ibid.

190  
On August 8, 1972, a forty-five-year-old Argentinian woman:
Casimiro Porras et al., “Recovery from Rabies in Man,”
Annals of Internal Medicine
85, no. 1 (1976): 44–48.

190  
One was a New York laboratory worker:
Centers for Disease Control, “Rabies in a Laboratory Worker,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
26 (1977): 183–84.

190  
The second, a nine-year-old boy in Mexico:
Lucia Alvarez et al., “Partial Recovery from Rabies in a Nine-Year-Old Boy,”
Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal
13, no. 12 (1994): 1154–55.

190  
a six-year-old girl bitten by a street dog:
S. N. Madhusudana et al., “Partial Recovery from Rabies in a Six-Year-Old Girl,”
International Journal of Infectious Diseases
6, no. 1 (2002): 85–86.

192  
In a video made by her doctors:
Online resource accompanying Rodney E. Willoughby et al., “Survival After Treatment of Rabies with Induction of Coma,”
New England Journal of Medicine
352, no. 24 (2005): 2508–14.

192  
But by the time a second video was made:
Online resource accompanying William T. Hu et al., “Long-Term Follow-up After Treatment of Rabies by Induction of Coma,”
New England Journal of Medicine
357, no. 9 (2007): 945–46.

193  
In the spring of 2011, Giese graduated:
Mark Johnson, “Rabies Survivor Jeanna Giese Graduates from College,”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
May 8, 2011.

193  
On her YouTube channel, she has posted:
Jeanna Giese’s YouTube channel,
http://www.youtube.com/user/JeannaGieseRabies01#p/u
.

193  
spelled out various unique features of Giese’s case:
Willoughby et al., “Survival After Treatment of Rabies with Induction of Coma.”

194  
On a Web site hosted by the Medical College of Wisconsin:
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin rabies registry home page,
http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/33223/router.asp
.

194  
In 2011, Precious Reynolds:
Stephen Magagnini, “Scrappy 8-Year-Old from Humboldt Beats All Odds in Her Battle Against Rabies,”
Sacramento Bee,
June 13, 2011, 1B.

195  
Reynolds remained in a coma:
Erin Allday, “Rabies: Humboldt Girl Beats Virus Against Odds,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
June 12, 2011, A1.

195  
Reynolds left UC Davis Children’s Hospital:
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/06/22/girl-heads-home-after-surviving-rabies/
.

195  
six out of thirty-five cases:
Ferris Jabr, “Rabies May Not Be the Invincible Killer We Thought,”
New Scientist,
June 21, 2011.

196  
a thirty-three-year-old man treated at the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital:
Thiravat Hemachudha et al., “Rabies,”
Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports
6, no. 6 (2006): 460–68.

196  
Thiravat Hemachudha, was a vocal skeptic: “
The Girl Who Survived Rabies.”

196  
in a subsequent paper, he and his colleagues:
Henry Wilde, Thiravat Hemachudha, and Alan C. Jackson, “Viewpoint: Management of Human Rabies,”
Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
102, no. 10 (2008): 979–82.

196  
Jackson penned a dissenting editorial:
Alan C. Jackson, “Recovery from Rabies,”
New England Journal of Medicine
352, no. 24 (2005): 2549–50.

196  
he remains unconvinced, and for an intriguing reason:
Alan C. Jackson, “Why Does the Prognosis Remain So Poor in Human Rabies?”
Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy
8, no. 6 (2010): 623–25.

197  
Pasteur himself recorded
the case of a dog:
Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies,” quoting Louis Pasteur, Charles Chamberland, and Emile Roux, “Nouveaux faits pour servir à la connaissance de la rage,”
Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, Série III, Sciences de la Vie
95 (1882): 1187–92.

197  
recovery from rabies has been documented:
Theodore C. Doege and Robert L. Northrop, “Evidence for Inapparent Rabies Infection,”
Lancet,
Oct. 5, 1974, 826–29.

197  
One early nineteenth-century physician claimed in the
Lancet:
“Preventive and Curative Treatment of Rabies,”
Lancet
, September 29, 1838, 55–58.

197  
reported recovery from rabies after they transfused serum:
“Rabies,”
Medical Annals of the District of Columbia
33, April 1964: 158–59.

197  
nine cases of reported recovery:
Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies.”

197  
A survey for serum rabies antibodies:
Ibid.

197  
a case report that detailed an apparently unvaccinated survivor:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Presumptive Abortive Human Rabies—Texas, 2009,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
59, no. 7 (2010): 185–90.

198  
At home, the girl’s headaches resumed:
Ibid.

198  
Despite an extensive workup:
Ibid.

198  
The next day, the CDC ran tests:
Ibid.

199  
On March 14, the girl received a dose:
Ibid.

199  
“we need to focus more on prevention”:
Barbara Juncosa, “Hope for Rabies Victims: Unorthodox Coma Therapy Shows Promise,”
Scientific American,
Nov. 21, 2008.

Chapter 8: Island of the Mad Dogs

203  
it was probably Thomas Aquino’s dog:
Merritt Clifton, “How Not to Fight a Rabies Epidemic: A History in Bali,”
Asian Biomedicine
4, no. 4 (2010): 663–70.

203  
But enforcement of this law:
Ibid.

204  
Two months after Thomas’s dog:
Ibid.

205  
When his mother took him to the hospital:
Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Threat Gets Ever More Real,”
Jakarta Post,
Jan. 9, 2009.

205  
It took two more deaths:
Clifton, “How Not to Fight a Rabies Epidemic.”

206  
in Kazakhstan:
International Society for Infectious Diseases, ProMED correspondence, July 19, 2011.

206  
dog bites are still responsible for:
The CDC’s Rabies in the U.S. and Around the World page,
http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/index.html
.

206  
In South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province:
Chris Bateman, “AIDS Fuels Ownerless Feral Dog Populations,”
South African Medical Journal
95, no. 2 (2005): 78–79.

207  
But vaccination campaigns in dogs:
Partners for Rabies Prevention’s introduction to the Blueprint for Rabies Prevention and Control,
http://www.rabiesblueprint.com/spip.php?rubrique5
.

207  
the cost of a full course of:
WHO Media Centre’s Rabies Fact Sheet,
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs099/en/
.

209  
the government had removed from targeted regions:
Desy Nurhayati, “Mass Culling of Stray Dogs to Continue Amid Protests,”
Jakarta Post,
Nov. 6, 2009.

209  
one Australian woman described how her own dog:
“Bali Dog Cull Shocks Aussies,”
Herald Sun,
March 1, 2009.

209  
Another Australian, a chef, witnessed:
Ibid.

210  
Krishna pointed out that it was in 1860:
http://bluecrossofindia.org/abc.html
.

210  
But imported vaccines, which have been proven protective:
Luh De Suryani, “Vaccines Help Dogs Fight Rabies in Short-Term,”
Jakarta Post,
Feb. 12, 2010.

211  
281 dogs had been destroyed:
“Hundreds of Dogs Put Down, Vaccinated Against Rabies in Bali,”
Jakarta Post,
Dec. 18, 2008.

211  
its efforts to contain rabies on Bukit:
Luh De Suryani, “Denpasar Goes on Alert as More Rabid Dogs Found,”
Jakarta Post,
Jan. 9, 2009.

211  
scores of high-ranking local government officials:
Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Death Toll Rises to Six,”
Jakarta Post,
Jan. 19, 2009.

211  
despite the extermination of 26,705:
Desy Nurhayati, “Mass Culling of Stray Dogs to Continue Amid Protests,”
Jakarta Post,
Nov. 6, 2009.

211  
Thomas Aquino’s friend Freddy:
Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Death Toll Rises to Six.”

211  
his three-year-old neighbor Ketut Tangkas:
Luh De Suryani, “Toddler Dies from Suspected Rabies,”
Jakarta Post,
Jan. 6, 2009.

213  
immune dogs, or “warrior dogs”:
Trisha Sertori, “Janice Girardi: Trusting in Warrior Dogs,”
Jakarta Post,
March 29, 2010.

217  
Niels Pedersen, even gives some credence:
Bali: Island of the Dogs
(2006).

217  
In addition to supplying owners with protection:
A. Agung Gde Putra, K. Gunata Dan, and Gde Asrama, “Dog Demography in Badung District the Province of Bali and Their Significance to Rabies Control” (paper presented at Konferensi Ilmiah Veteriner Nasional XI, Semarang, Central Java, Oct. 11–13, 2010).

221
Bali’s staggering canine turnover rate:
Ibid.

221  
abandoning the goal of eradicating rabies:
Luh De Suryani, “Administration Pushes Back Rabies-Free Deadline to 2015,”
Jakarta Post,
May 26, 2011.

222  
“But Walt could see the drama”:
Didier Ghez, ed.,
Walt’s People—Volume 10
(New York: Xlibris, 2010), 146.

223  
“there was no out but to kill the dog”:
Ibid., 145.

223  
called the ending “child abuse”:
C. Jerry Kutner, “Good Dog, Bad Dog: The Horror of
Old Yeller
,”
Bright Lights Film Journal
, April 2001,
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/32/oldyeller.php
.

223 “
still doesn’t forgive us”:
Didier Ghez,
Walt’s People,
145.

Conclusion: The Devil, Leashed

225  
In July 2009, though, a suspiciously erratic animal was spotted:
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/zoo/09vet07.pdf
.

226  
raccoons thrive more today in urban:
Samuel I. Zeveloff,
Raccoons:
A Natural History
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 75.

226  
the raccoon eats everything:
Paul Rezendes,
Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 162–63.

226  
“one of the most intensive wildlife rabies outbreaks”:
Eugene Linden and Hannah Bloch, “Beware of Rabies,”
Time,
Aug. 23, 1993.

226  
Before the mid-1970s, raccoon rabies:
Meghan E. Jones et al., “Environmental and Human Demographic Features Associated with Epizootic Raccoon Rabies in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia,”
Journal of Wildlife Diseases
39, no. 4 (2003): 869–74.

226  
more than thirty-five hundred raccoons:
Suzanne R. Jenkins and William G. Winkler, “Descriptive Epidemiology from an Epizootic of Raccoon Rabies in the Middle Atlantic States, 1982–1983,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
126, no. 3 (1987): 429–37.

226  
The mid-Atlantic saw its first case:
Victor F. Nettles et al., “Rabies in Translocated Raccoons,”
American Journal of Public Health
69, no. 6 (1979): 601–2.

227  
Within three decades, rabid raccoons:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Update: Raccoon Rabies Epizootic—United States and Canada, 1999,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
49, no. 2 (2000): 31–35.

227  
updates to its online rabies map:
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Web site,
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/cd/animal_rabies_2010_mn.pdf
.

227  
rabid raccoons were staggering out:
Ibid.,
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/cd/cdrab-borough.shtml
.

234–35  
Back in 1982, a Yale researcher named Thomas Lentz:
Thomas Lentz et al., “Is the Acetylcholine Receptor a Rabies Virus Receptor?”
Science
215, no. 4529 (1982): 182–84.

235  
in a subsequent paper eight years later:
Thomas Lentz, “Rabies Virus Binding to an Acetylcholine Receptor α-subunit Peptide,”
Journal of Molecular Recognition
3, no. 2 (1990): 82–88.

235  
after treatment with the molecule, 80 percent:
Priti Kumar et al., “Transvascular Delivery of Small Interfering RNA to the Central Nervous System,”
Nature
448 (2007): 39–43.

235  
in March 2011, a team at Oxford:
BBC News, March 20, 2011.

236  
“Cerberus stood agape”:
From Virgil’s
Georgics.
See John Jackson trans.,
Virgil
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), 101.

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