California girl is 6th person to survive rabies without vaccination
[Via Boing Boing]
Rabies is a strange and scary thing. Until 2004, this virus was 100% lethal in humans—without a dose of life-saving vaccine, preferably before symptoms even presented themselves, everybody died. That changed with the introduction of the Milwaukee Protocol, an experimental treatment that calls for patients to be put into medically induced comas and given antiviral drugs. The idea is that, usually, people die not from rabies itself, but from related dysfunction of their nervous system. If you shut down the brain, maybe the dysfunction won’t matter as much and you can keep the person alive long enough for their immune system to kill the rabies. The video above tells the story of the first person to survive rabies thanks to the Milwaukee Protocol and how the Protocol works.
The treatment has not worked on everybody. In general, it’s worked best on older children and teenagers. This week, 8-year-old Precious Reynolds became the 3rd American—and 6th person ever—saved by the Protocol.
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I had never heard of anyone surviving rabies. It is supposed to be 100% fatal but this protocol sounds like it lowers the odds somewhat. They should make a movie about Jeanna Giese, the first to survive..
While she suffered some brain injury, the protocol did its job and gave her a life. It is not a perfect cure but it seems to raise the survival rate from 0% to 10-20%. And there is a lot of therapy needed to recover even a close to normal existence.
Jeanna has now graduated from college. Without the treatment, it would never have happened. Perhaps the doctor should get the Nobel Prize for Medicine for opening up this novel approach.
