Quote from The Final Reality:
He knew the scenario and it was the same for all the patients placed in his experimental clinical trial: rapid breakdown of the muscle which was followed in quick succession by internal organ failure, blistering rashes and then terminating in encephalopathy where in essence the brain shuts down.
Only Dr. Christakos and his three surgical colleagues knew about the trial. The rest of the hospital was oblivious to the truth.
The Disease, as it has been coined, is the illness that ravages mankind throughout my novel, The Final Reality. This except describes the sequence of events which occur when one is afflicted: multi-organ failure, rash, confusion, seizures and ultimately death. It’s a condition that basically shuts down the human body, and despite all advances in modern medicine, researches can find neither a source nor a cure for this deadly illness.
It seems almost unheard of that such a thing could happen in today’s world. This isn’t the Middle Ages where a plague can wipe out a third of the human population. We now have modern science, antibiotics, and vaccines to protect us against all those bugs that Mother Nature has to offer.
A recent article I just read on Yahoo tells us just how vulnerable we are:
Anywar is one of more than 3,000 children in northern Uganda who are suffering from a debilitating mystery ailment known as nodding disease, which has touched almost every family in the village of Tumangu.
For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness, which locals say has killed hundreds of youngsters.
What they do know is that the disease affects only children and gradually devastates its victims through debilitating seizures, stunted growth, wasted limbs, mental disabilities and sometimes starvation. Scientists are trying to find a cure: since 2010, researchers ranging from epidemiologists to environmental experts, neurologists, toxicologists and psychiatrists have carried out a range of tests.
Efforts continue to understand if the disease is still spreading or has peaked — and why it is seems confined only to certain communities.
Sometimes fact is more interesting than fiction. Unfortunately, with the above mentioned disease, this statement holds true. Is this condition something mankind has never seen before? Until Stanley Prusiner of the University of California, SF announced the discovery of a prion, no one had any idea of what caused such lethal conditions as Mad Cow Disease. Is this disease another deadly prion condition or have we found something completely novel?
Or is this disease something that we just can’t treat? Dr. Jack Edwards, chief of infectious diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center was recently quoted as saying, “Within just a few years, we could be seeing that most of our microorganisms are resistant to most of our antibiotics.”
Unfortunately, the next pandemic could come in many different forms or for many different reasons. The Final Reality outlines one of them and foreshadows the consequences of just such an event.