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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Author’s Note

Daniel sent a quick email recounting everything that had happened, emphasizing that he was perfectly okay. Then in all caps he wrote that he was 90 percent sure he’d been cured of his psoriatic arthritis, and that he might be close to finding a cure for all autoimmune diseases.

He wrote that he was heading back to the village as soon as possible to start doing research and narrow down what had cured him. He probably wouldn’t be in touch for another three months.

Daniel added that he loved him.

≈

Back at the village six days later, Daniel asked one of the Spanish-speaking Indians to translate his request to the shaman. Daniel wanted to take blood samples from some of the villagers—all of them, if possible.

The shaman, who was also the village elder, refused. They would only willingly give their blood as an offering to their gods.

Over the next month, Daniel slowly wore the shaman down. He spent several hours with him and a Machinere Indian acting as translator, telling the shaman his people could hold the cure to a terrible group of diseases ravaging the entire world.

The shaman knew about disease only too well. Finally, he relented.

Many of the villagers were happy to give a few droplets of their blood. Others were frightened and refused. Of the 216 villagers, 176 gave blood.

The results were, in a word, remarkable.

Out of all the samples, seven had high concentrations, the vials turning a dark purple. Two had low concentrations, the vial turning a soft blue. For a total of nine positive tests, just over 5 percent of the sample size.

This was moderately less than the 8 percent of the world population who had some sort of autoimmune disease. But more staggering was that roughly 15 percent of healthy people—people without autoimmune disease—will still have a positive ANA test. That’s because humans have antibodies in their blood for all kinds of reasons—from bacterial or fungal infections, to viruses, to simple genetic makeup—and these regular antibodies read as false positives.

That only 5 percent of the ANA tests had come out positive meant that there was something unique to these villagers that was suppressing the immune response of even the healthiest individuals. Daniel believed the unknown factor was microbial, but it would take months, possibly years, and hordes of specialized equipment to determine what the single or multiple organisms were.

It was near the middle of July.

Maybe it was time for him to head back home.

≈

Daniel decided to stay, at least another week.

On July 20, two days before he was set to leave, he and several villagers were sitting around at night drinking tea, as was the custom. The tea wasn’t anything exotic, in fact, the sole ingredient was popular in teas all over the world.

Ginger root.