About thirty minutes later the results for the mammoth were ready for review. She looked at the data carefully to make sure all of her assumptions were accurate. Then she looked at the analysis compared to a normal elephant. It was uncanny how close the elephant’s and the mammoth’s blood tests were. The only difference was the six tests for SDX. The mammoth’s sample was abnormal for all six and the elephant was normal for all ten. The only logical conclusion was that the mammoth had been infected with SDX and had died early in its life from the disease. It is a shame that there were no internal organs to analyze for signs of advance aging, she thought.
She immediately drafted an email to Ben.
Hi Ben,
Baby Mammoth has been identified as positive for SDX, based on an analysis of the results you forwarded. What next? Call me if you want to discuss.
Katie
The email arrived in Ben’s inbox, 5,000 miles away, within seconds. He read it and for the second time today was dancing around the office. Again he ran down the hall and passed on the news to Natalya.
“Now what are you going to do?” ask Natalya.
“I think we need to analyze the mammoth carcass that is currently in Washington, to see if we can glean any evidence from it. It might also be good to take a trip to where the mammoth was found. Are you up for a cross country excursion?” Ben asked.
How romantic, thought Natalya. “If you think we will find something that could help us cure this disease, of course.”
“I’m thinking we should take soil samples in the area to see if there are any contaminants or foreign substances we don’t normally come in to contact with. I wonder if the area has been preserved?”
“I will make some calls and see what I can find out. Did you find anything out about Katie’s daughter yet?”
“No, I’m going to call her shortly to discuss the next steps. I’ll let you know what I find out,” said Ben.
Back in D.C., Katie was analyzing the latest batch of blood bank samples, expecting the usual stream of positives. But as she scanned the results, she was astonished to find there was something different about this batch: one negative sample. Just one. But it was important.
She ran a protocol to sort the samples to find out exactly which one was negative. It would take a few more minutes, and she held her breath waiting to see which one of the 9,000 would emerge.
Five minutes later she had isolated the data from the negative sample. She did a quick visual analysis and it was confirmed negative. The batch number was 2014740916ATX. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but someone who was producing the data would surely know.
She picked up the phone and called Sarah. “Hi Sarah, we have our first negative from the blood bank samples. Do you know who is coordinating the data collection?”
“I don’t know, Katie. Ben has been handling all of that. If you email him, I am sure he can get you to the right person. Sounds like this is a day for progress. First the mammoth news, and now another negative. Awesome! Keep up the good work, Katie,” said Sarah.
Katie was drafting an email when the phone rang. “Dr. McMann, can I help you?”
“Hey Katie, it’s me, Ben. I was calling about the next steps with the mammoth. We need to get one of our medical forensic teams to examine the mammoth’s carcass to determine if there is anything we can tie to SDX, now that we know the mammoth was a carrier or even was possibly killed by SDX or something similar. Will you let Sarah know? I think she will want to coordinate that,” said Ben.
“Sure, I will take care of that, but I was just writing you an email. We got our first negative on a blood bank sample. I have isolated the sample number, but now I need to know who to contact to track down the donor,” said Katie.
“Give me the sample number and I will tell you where it’s from,” said Ben.
“The number is 2014740916ATX.”
“Okay, that means the sample was taken in 2014 in Austin, Texas. There are probably a dozen donation centers in Austin, so you’ll need to contact Mary Jones at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta and she can figure this out for you. She is supervising all the blood testing operations.”
“Thanks for the information. I will email her with a copy to you. Will she understand that it is urgent?” Katie asked.
“Just mention the fact that you are working on SDX data with me and she will give it the highest priority. We need to find the person and have him or her examined by a doctor who can give us a full report. I hope the person is cooperative,” said Ben. “That reminds me, I never asked you about your daughter. Your daughter is negative too. Have we had a doctor evaluate her to determine if there is a lead we can follow?”
“The subject never came up and I guess as a mother I didn’t think about having my daughter subjected to that type of scrutiny yet,” said Katie.
“Well, can you tell me a little bit about her for our comparison? Is she in good health?”
“She is in relatively good health considering her disability,” said Katie.
“What kind of disability does she have?” asked Ben.
“She has Down syndrome. However, she is very healthy and does well in her classes at the community college, and she is working as an intern at the County Government Offices.”
Alarm bells were going off now in Ben’s head. “I wonder if Down syndrome, which is a genetic disorder, could be responsible for her immunity,” Ben replied. “It is possible, but not certain. It will be interesting to compare the health of the other negative to make a determination if Downs or any kind of genetic disorder, plays a role at all.”
“Initially I wondered the same thing, but then I discounted it based on…” Katie paused for a moment. “You know, I don’t know what I based it on. It just didn’t seem to make any sense to me at the time.”
“I would have to agree with you Katie, but we have to investigate every avenue if we are going to have a chance at finding a cure,” said Ben.
“Well, let me get working on finding out who this negative is so we can make the comparison,” said Katie.
“Good idea. Also, I am going to do a few blood samples here and send them to you for analysis. There are some specific people we want to know about. I should have that data to you by tomorrow afternoon. You’re doing great work Katie, keep it up,” Ben exclaimed.
“Well, you too Ben!” Katie replied as she said good-bye.
They hung up and Katie emailed Mary Jones. She responded almost immediately and the search was underway. Mary would coordinate tracking down the individual donor and she would facilitate the physical exam. She would send the results to Katie as soon as she had them.
After hanging up the phone, Ben went down the hall to talk to Natalya.
“Natalya, I think we should have you and the girls tested,” said Ben.
“I thought you said that everyone who has been tested has been positive with the exception of Katie’s daughter?” said Natalya.
“I just got off the phone with Katie and they found a second negative case. They are trying to locate the person so they can give them a physical exam,” said Ben.
“That is great news. What about Katie’s daughter?”
“That is why I want to test you and the girls. Katie’s daughter has Down syndrome. That might be why she is immune. I think we should test you, Natasha and Nadya to determine if you are all positive. I have a hunch that Nadya might be negative,” said Ben.
“Are you saying that you think the disease is attacking the genetic structure of its host and that those with the genetic structure of Down syndrome are protected from this particular pathogen?” asked Natalya.
“Maybe. Do you have a better theory?”
“No, but the DNA/genetic testing we are doing might provide a window into how this disease works if you are correct,” said Natalya.
“I agree. Do you think we can get the girls’ blood drawn today and send their samples to a lab for immediate testing?” Ben asked.
“Sure, we can do it all right here.
I will go pick up the girls and bring them in this afternoon. We should have the results by tomorrow morning. Ben, I hope you are right. I hate to put them through this for nothing,” said Natalya.
“At this point, I think it’s worth knowing,” said Ben.
Katie received an email from Mary Jones four hours later.
Hi Katie,
We have identified the individual donor. We are attempting to make contact. We have also contracted with a doctor to be ready to perform a physical exam. We are hoping to have the report by 6:00 p.m. Austin time today. That would be 7:00 p.m. Washington, D.C. time. I will keep you posted.
Mary
Katie knew she would be in for a late night, but it was well worth it. Finally, they could compare two people who are not showing symptoms of SDX. She was beating herself up with the thought that she should have pursued the Down syndrome angle sooner. She decided to ask Sarah for permission to test the staff and students at Rob’s Center to see if there was any correlation.
Yuka
Permafrost. Peat bogs. Frostlines. Tundra. All things most people have read about, somewhat understand, and always associate with places that are very cold and very wet. Few wish to visit these locales; fewer still wish to live there. Lucky for them, for hidden beneath the millions of square kilometers of tundra, especially in Canada and Russia, well-preserved below those permafrost zones, lay animals long since dead, entombed by the cold from ancient times, quietly waiting to be rediscovered. And humankind’s luck was beginning to run out…
From the peat bogs of Siberia near the Arctic Ocean, the world celebrated the discovery in 2010 of a nearly intact juvenile female woolly mammoth. They named her Yuka. Time had been kind to Yuka’s remains, a splendid specimen that was estimated at around 39,000 years old. With this remarkable find, scientists took a serious look at whether one could bring these beasts back to life through cloning. They could do this because Yuka provided scientists with something they had been searching for a long time -- intact mammoth serum.
Roaming the earth in the late Pleistocene period, Yuka had died suddenly, perhaps at the hands of ancient humans, given the evidence with her remains. For unknown reasons Yuka had been wounded, probably in an earlier fight with a lion, based on wounds she bore. For some reason she escaped the lion, but then fell prey to humans after she apparently became stuck in a bog, perhaps while trying to flee her human pursuers. The mark of man is clear, for Yuka also bore on her body straight cuts likely from a tool of some sort, some of the first clear evidence of mammoth/human contact.
Still, Yuka’s hunters were unable to butcher her remains completely. In fact, they had only enough time to take some of her organs before something abruptly interrupted their work -- a blizzard or extreme cold, or perhaps a sickness among them. Why remove the organs first? Probably for some ritual significance. In any event, Yuka was left fairly intact and her remains quickly sank into the bog and became frozen almost instantly. The ensuing rapid freeze persisted and preserved Yuka for the early 21st century.
Similar stories like Yuka’s affected other wooly mammoths, preserving their carcasses too, but in most cases the death-to-freezing delay eliminated any chance for scientists to find viable cells to study, cells best obtained from an ancient blood/serum sample, for therein lay the best DNA. The odds of finding intact DNA were formidable, but scientists knew that once they found viable DNA an ancient species could theoretically be brought back to life through cloning. The idea was to insert viable mammoth DNA into elephant eggs, then implant it into an elephant female, perhaps one of the Asian elephant variety, since the African kind were too dangerous to work with. The hope would be that one of the now fertilized eggs would take hold and grow. This then could, in theory at least, lead to the resurrection of a species long dead.
For others studying and handling the remains of these marvelous beasts now coming to light there was also money to be made, that ever present tonic and fuel to human progress. (And ambition.) From cloning and drug companies, to exhibitions and merchandising, many people wanted in on the action these zombie mammoths could offer.
And while researchers and opportunists exploited this major "Jurassic Parkesque" breakthrough with Yuka, no one gave a serious relook as to why these great elephant-like beasts died off in the first place. Sure, a human hand was involved in Yuka’s case and this in and of itself was truly remarkable. But evidence from other mammoth remains confirmed that they also died suddenly. Their stomachs were often full, they were of varying ages, and in most cases there was no evidence of a struggle. Nothing suggested anything other than the classic line--they died off suddenly, likely from overhunting and then climate change wiping out the last of an already dwindled population. Perhaps, but no one thought to ask some simple questions: Why was it that not long after the disappearance of the wooly mammoth the first evidence of civilized man began to appear around the planet? Organized communities begin to appear in the archeological record. Human religions became more formalized. Written forms of communication made their first appearance. And human tools became more sophisticated. Could these beasts have been sick too? Or carriers of something unknown, something lethal to other species?
In fact, not long after Yuka’s demise the beginnings of a different type of human were to be seen around the world, from southern France to the mountains of Peru, to the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Turkey, and on to the Yangtze River valley. In time, six civilizations of new humans would arise independently, part of a “revolution” involving the domestication of plants and animals and humanity’s desire for a sedentary lifestyle. Compared to the hunter-gather humans of before, these new peoples showed great skill at growing things, producing and storing food surpluses, and reproducing quickly. It was not long before their growing numbers, either through conflict or voluntarily, demanded a governing elite to manage and protect them all.
And so the State was born.
Back into the future, Scientists in India and Japan, with Yuka’s well-preserved remains now in their hands, went to great effort at perfecting techniques to clone a wooly mammoth with viable stem cells harvested from Yuka’s well-preserved serum.
Meanwhile, Yuka, now drained of her precious serum, made trips around the world to exhibition after exhibition, on every major continent, and in city after city where there was money to be made in the name of science and education. No one ever gave thought to the idea that Yuka and others like her might be a serious health problem in disguise. Millions saw these animals and therefore millions were inadvertently exposed to something unknown because no one even knew it existed. Now, in turn, these infected millions unwittingly exposed others through something as simple as the touch from a hand, one of the most common of customs with these civilized humans. And with each touch or direct contact with the contaminated objects they handled, people became infected again and again with an ever stronger home-grown alien.
The human race, over seven billion strong inside it’s taken-for-granted fortress of proud science, progress, prosperity, and public health, now met a Trojan Horse that carried a silent, odorless, airborne, hardy pathogen that no one sensed because all were unaware. It’s entry into a host triggered no immediate reaction or symptoms that would have alarmed authorities. No one knew what they didn’t know. And as people all over the world ran to and fro, the Trojan Mammoth germ successfully entered most of mankind unnoticed, thanks to a pathogen of ancient origin, long frozen in time, now brought to life essentially because the planet had gotten warmer.
CHAPTER 41
Katie briefed Sarah on everything that had taken place. She passed along what Ben thought should happen next as far as the testing of the mammoth’s DNA. She also told Sarah that Ben was planning to go to the site where the mammoth was found to do some soil samples and look for anything else that could possibly provide a clue to what was causing the disease.
“Seems like a sound plan,” said Sarah. “When do you expect to have something on the negative blood test
in Texas?”
“Sometime after seven this evening. I’ll stick around to see what I can find out and let you know as soon as I have the doctor’s report,” said Katie.
“I am going to let you brief all of this at today’s call, if that’s alright with you. I will field any questions you don’t feel comfortable answering. Just let me know,” said Sarah.
“Got it,” said Katie. “I’m going to my office to brush up on everything and get my thoughts together. I will be in your conference room for the DVC about a quarter ‘til two.”
“That should be fine. See you then.”
Katie stopped by the cafeteria on her way back to her office. She was going to have her usual, a Diet Coke and Snickers bar. That should hold her until after the call, she thought. As she was checking out, the sense that she was being watched overwhelmed her again. There were several groups of people eating their lunch and one man off to the side with a newspaper. She hesitated for a moment and no one looked her way, so she left for her office thinking nothing of it.
Back in her office she checked her email. Nothing from Mary or Ben. There were more blood bank samples to analyze, so she entered them into the computer and started the program. There was an email from Beth, so she opened it to find the death-versus-age data she needed to conduct her life expectancy analysis, ready to get started as soon as the DVC was over.
Right on time she entered the Director’s conference room, and found Sarah discussing the findings so far with a person she didn’t know.
“Hi Katie, I would like you to meet Dr. Kent Smythe. He is from the National Institute of Health or NIH, and he will be leading the DNA testing of the mammoth. Katie, if I remember correctly, you said the Russians were already testing the DNA of the victims and live subjects believed to be infected. Is that correct?” asked Sarah.
The Perfect Pathogen Page 25
