D35: La Rage!

I just found a great new column at the NY Times called "The Wild Side". It's written by an Evolutionary Biologist named Olivia Judson. She mentions that rabies could be nearly eliminated from the planet for perhaps 60 million over 5 years - something perhaps she should propose to a charitable group like the Gates Foundation. Rabies, you say? Why focus on that? Here's why... It's an absolutely horrible death and it mostly kills poor children in Africa who are bitten by dogs. The treatment for rabies costs hundreds of dollars for each person bitten, but only $1.50 per dog to prevent it. Guess which option makes more sense?

Here's an excerpt that drives home just how horrible death by rabies is...

"The virus that causes the disease is spread by the saliva of infected animals. On arriving in a new victim, it travels through the nerves to the spinal cord and up into the brain, where it multiplies rapidly before spreading to other parts of the body, including the salivary glands. The time between being bitten and developing disease can vary from a few days to months or, occasionally, years. Depending on which part of the brain the virus ravages, the disease can take different forms, but the most common is known as furious rabies. This will kill you within a week of symptoms beginning to appear.

Often the first symptom is itching around the site of the bite. Sometimes, it’s an itching so intense that people will tear open their own skin as they scratch. The victim becomes afraid of water, to the point where drinking becomes impossible, no matter how great the thirst: the sight of a glass of water will induce spasms of terror so severe that the victim will hurl the glass away and may retch so violently as to tear the lining of the throat. The vocal cords become paralyzed, distorting the voice. Saliva may become thick and heavy. And then comes the madness.
“At the peak of excitement, the patient’s whole nervous system seems to be aroused. He is in a state of extreme agitation and has frightening hallucinations. His face is a mask of terror. He shouts incomprehensibly at the top of his distorted voice. His body is racked with tremors or spasms. He may struggle frantically and powerfully to free himself from constraints and try to escape from the room.”

Episodes of madness continue until the victim falls into a coma; this is followed by paralysis and death. Sometimes the madness includes ferocious, biting, attacks on anyone nearby. Sometimes it includes a sexual frenzy and attempted rape.

If you arrived in a Western hospital with symptoms of rabies, you’d be sedated until you died. In poor countries, where hospitals are scarce and sedatives scarcer, often nothing can be done, and the victim may be locked into a room, alone, to die. Usually, the victims are children."

from: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/a-coffin-for-rabies/