BooksBarbecue
Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. Author’s Note

Daniel had proven his theory. He had isolated and identified a helper bacteria that suppressed the body’s autoimmune response.

He had discovered the first “autobiotic.”

53

53

tribal village
august 23, 3:23 p.m.
days since abduction: 18

Gina was standing on the narrow path next to Thomas, the two other men he’d come with, and Martin. They were across from Patrick, Bill, and Daniel. The four soldiers were seated on a fallen log just steps into the thick foliage. For the past ten minutes, all of them had listened silently as Daniel recounted his story.

Though Gina had studied autoimmune diseases in med school and had seen several cases during her residency, it wasn’t until she worked as a primary care physician at a clinic in Seattle that she’d observed an exponential rise in the prevalence of these diseases. In her six-month tenure, she had encountered upward of a hundred patients who complained of fatigue, muscle aches, digestive issues, joint pain, recurring fever, swollen glands, and other mysterious symptoms.

After performing a physical exam, Gina would recommend doing a full blood test panel and almost always she would include an ANA test. The laboratory ANA test was more complicated than Daniel’s portable ELISA kit, but for the most part, it worked along the same lines. If the ANA test came back positive, Gina would refer the patient to a rheumatologist—a doctor specializing in autoimmune conditions—who would perform further testing.

Two years earlier, before the World Health Organization stopped funding Gina’s work with the Tibióno, a rheumatologist had spent three days there with her.

The doctor, Hal Wentwoll, had administered ANA tests to thirty of the villagers.

Only one came back positive.

Similar to what Daniel said, Wentwoll theorized that the low incidence was due to a combination of factors, but mainly because the villagers had grown up in and around dirt, splashed in the many rivers, lived in close proximity to both domesticated and wild animals, were rarely treated with antibiotics, and received limited vaccines, if any. In their daily lives, the villagers had been inundated with microbes since birth. Their immune systems had never been coddled; they knew the difference between a foreign invader and a domestic citizen.

According to Wentwoll, in the last several years, researchers had discovered that good intestinal bacteria regulated the innate immune system and confirmed that the presence of good bacteria could help inhibit the immune response. Scientists theorized that probiotics could potentially be used to treat or possibly even cure a wide range of systemic conditions.

They just had to find the right bacteria.

If what Daniel said was true, that he’d discovered a bacteria that suppressed the human immune response, then his discovery wasn’t just groundbreaking—it was revolutionary.