"The Dragon Factory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maberry Jonathan)

Chapter Eleven

Hebron, Louisiana

Saturday, August 28, 8:55 A.M.

Time Remaining on Extinction Clock: 99 hours, 5 minutes

Rabbi Scheiner was an old man, but he had bright green eyes and a face well used to smiling. However, as he walked beside his nephew, Dr. David Meyer, the rabbi’s mouth was pulled into a tight line and his eyes were dark with concern.

“How sure are you about this, David?” the rabbi asked, pitching his voice low enough so that the nurses and patients in the ward could not overhear.

David Meyer shook the sheaf of papers in his hand. “We ran every test we could, and the lab in Baton Rouge confirmed our findings.”

“It’s unfortunate, David… but it does happen. You know more than I do that there’s no cure for this, and that the best we can do is screen young people and counsel them before marriage. Warn them of the risks.”

“That’s the point, Rabbi,” insisted Meyer. “We did those screens. We have a very high concentration of Ashkenazi Jews here, most of them from families that fled the Rhine as things were going bad in the late nineteen thirties. Virtually everyone in Hebron, Tefka, and Muellersville has been screened-we still get grants from Israel to run the polymerase chain reaction techniques, and they’re very accurate. We know the carriers, and we have counseled them. If these occurrences were within the group of known carriers, then I wouldn’t have called you.”

“Then I don’t understand. Haaretz reported that the disease was virtually eradicated. You yourself told me that there had been no babies born to Jewish families here in America with the disease since 2003.”

Meyer took the rabbi by the arm and led him into a small alcove.

“I know; I know,” said Meyer. His face was bright with stress, and sweat beaded his forehead. “However, in the last month clinics throughout the area have been reporting many cases of patients presenting with classic symptoms: slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, unsteadiness of gait, spasticity, sharp and sudden cognitive declines, and a variety of psychiatric illnesses that include psychosis typical of schizophrenia. Individually any one or two of those symptoms in an adult would not suggest LOTS, but when five or six symptoms present in virtually every patient… then what else could I think? I sent nurses out to take samples for genetic testing and we ran our own enzyme assay tests, but they’re not as precise at genetic testing as PCR tests, so I had the samples shipped to a lab in Baton Rouge.” He shook the sheaf of papers. “These are the results.”

Rabbi Scheiner reluctantly took the papers from Meyer and quickly read through them. In the comment notes he read: “Late Onset Tay-Sachs (LOTS) disease is a rare form of the disorder, typically occurring in patients in their twenties and early thirties. This disease is frequently misdiagnosed and usually nonfatal.”

He looked up.

“So you have several patients who have become sick?”

Meyer shook his head slowly. “Rabbi… I’ve had eleven patients here in Hebron, and there were nine in Tefka and six in Muellersville.”

The rabbi caught the phrasing. “You say you ‘had’ eleven patients…”

Meyer gave him a bleak stare. “Three have already died. Two more are… well, they have lapsed into comas. The others are getting sicker almost as I watch. The muscles needed to swallow become atrophic and paralyzed. We’ve intubated them, and I’ve even trached a few, but the paralysis spreads so fast. I don’t know how to treat any of them.”

“There’s no cure…” The rabbi said it as a statement. “God help us.”

“Researchers have been looking into gene therapy and other treatments, but even if we had a genetic option in hand, these people don’t have the time for it.”

“These are all children?”

Meyer shook his head. “No, and that’s what scares me the most. Infantile and Juvenile TSD are both fatal, but not LOTS. And yet every one of these patients is over twenty. Some are in their forties and fifties. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Could… could the disease have mutated?”

“It apparently has,” said Meyer, “but how? It was nearly eradicated. We’d beaten it. We’ve never had a single case here in Hebron, or in the other towns, and most of the people here are second- and even third-generation American born. We haven’t married strictly within the communities of Ashkenazi Jews, which means statistics should be on our side.”

Rabbi Scheiner put his hand on the young doctor’s arm. “Be strong, David. Tell me… what will you do?”

“I’ll have to report this. Now that I have the results from the genetic tests I can reach out to the major university hospitals.”

“What about the disease people?” asked the rabbi. “What about the Centers for Disease Control up in Atlanta? You went to them with the botulism problem a few years ago-”

“No,” said Meyer, “this is a genetic mutation, not a pathogen. It’s not contagious in any way that could cause an epidemic.”

Rabbi Scheiner’s eyes were intense, probing. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” said Meyer. “It’s an inherited disorder. You can’t just catch it.”

The rabbi nodded and turned to look out of the alcove at the patients in the ward. “Are you sure?” he asked again.