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ZOMBIE PREPPERS – Using zombies to teach science and medicine
With my colleague Greg Tinkler, I spent an afternoon last week at a local public library talking to kids about zombies:
The Zombie Apocalypse is coming. Will you be ready? University of Iowa epidemiologist Dr. Tara Smith will talk about how a zombie virus might spread and how you can prepare. Get a list of emergency supplies to go home and build your own zombie kit, just in case. Find out what to do when the zombies come from neuroscientist Dr. Greg Tinkler. As a last resort, if you can’t beat them, join them. Disguise yourself as a zombie and chow down on brrraaaaiiins, then go home and freak out your parents.
Why zombies? Obviously they’re a hot topic right now, particularly with the ascendance of The Walking Dead. They’re all over ComicCon. There are many different versions so the “rules” regarding zombies are flexible, and they can be used to teach all different kinds of scientific concepts–and more importantly, to teach kids how to *think* about translating some of this knowledge into practice (avoiding a zombie pandemic, surviving one, etc.) We ended up with about 30 people there: about 25 kids (using the term loosely, they ranged in age from maybe age 10 to 18 or so) and a smattering of adults. I covered the basics of disease transmission, then discussed how it applied to a potential “zombie germ,” while Greg explained how understanding the neurobiology of zombies can aid in fleeing from or killing them. The kids were involved, asked great questions, and even taught both of us a thing or two (and gave us additional zombie book recommendations!)
For infectious diseases, there are all kinds of literature-backed scenarios that can get kids discussing germs and epidemiology. People can die and reanimate as zombies, or they can just turn into infected “rage monsters” who try to eat you without actually dying first. They can have an extensive incubation period, or they can zombify almost immediately. Each situation calls for different types of responses–while the “living” zombies may be able to be killed in a number of different ways, for example, reanimated zombies typically can only be stopped by destroying the brains. Discussing these situations allows the kids to use critical thinking skills, to plan attacks and think through choice of weapons, escape routes and vehicles, and consider what they might need in a survival kit.
Likewise, zombie microbes can be spread through biting, through blood, through the air, by fomites or water, even by mosquitoes in some books. Agents can be viral, bacterial, fungal, prions or parasitic insect larvae (or combinations of those). Mulling on these different types of transmission issues and asking simple questions:
“How would you protect yourself if infection was spread through the air versus only spread by biting?”
“How well would isolation of infected people work if the incubation period is very long versus very short?”
“Why might you want to thoroughly wash your zombie-killing arrows before using them to kill squirrels, which you will then eat?” (ahem, Daryl)
can open up avenues of discussion into scientific issues that the kids don’t even realize they’re talking about (pandemic preparedness, for one). And the great thing is that these kids are *already experts* on the subject matter. They don’t have to learn about the epidemiology of a particular microbe to understand disease transmission and prevention, because they already know more than most of the adults do on the epidemiology of zombie diseases–the key is to get them to use that knowledge and broaden their thinking into various “what if” situations that they’re able to talk out and put pieces together.
It can be scary going to talk to kids. Since this was a new program, we didn’t know if anyone would even show up, or how it would go over. Greg brought a watermelon for some weapons demonstrations (household tools only–a screwdriver, hammer and a crowbar, no guns or Samurai swords) which was a big hit. Still, I realize many scientists are more comfortable talking with their peers than with 13-year-olds. Talking about something a bit ridiculous, like an impending zombie apocalypse, can lessen anxiety because it takes quite a lot of effort to be boring with that type of subject matter; it’s entertaining; and kids will listen. And after all, what you don’t know, might eat you.
ZOMBIE HISTORY – The Plague That Is Zombies
‘I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America” writes the young Abraham Lincoln in the best-selling 2010 novel “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Honest Abe doesn’t quite make good on his promise, and the grim results are all around us. Today, vampires spring from the shadows of our popular culture with deadening regularity, from the Anne Rice novels to the Twilight juggernaut to this year’s film adaptation about the ghoul-slaying Great Emancipator. Lately we’ve also endured a decadelong bout with the vampire’s undead cousin, the zombie, who has stalked films from “28 Days Later” to “Resident Evil” (the next sequel of which is due out this fall) and the popular TV show “The Walking Dead.”
Purists will hold forth on the differences between vampire and zombie, but the family resemblance is unmistakable. Both are human forms seized by an animal aggression, which manifests itself in an insatiable desire to feed on the flesh of innocents. (Blood, brains, whatever; it’s a matter of taste.) Moreover, that very act of biting, in most contemporary versions of both myths, transforms the victims into undead ghouls themselves.
Our vampires and zombies (as well as such poor relations as werewolves) all serve as carriers for vaguely similar saliva-borne infections. These mythical contagions are especially odd because they have so few analogues in the natural world. Indeed, there is really only one: the rabies virus.
A fatal infection of the brain, rabies is particularly devastating to the limbic system, one of the most primitive parts of the brain. Fear, anger and desire are hijacked by the virus, which meanwhile replicates prolifically in the salivary glands. The infected host, deprived of any sense of caution, is driven to furious attack and sometimes also racked with intense sexual urges. Today we know that most new diseases come from our contact with animal populations, but with rabies this transition is visible, visceral, horrible. A maddened creature bites a human, and some time later, the human is seized with the same animal madness.
Known and feared for all of human history—references to it survive from Sumerian times—rabies has served for nearly as long as a literary metaphor. For the Greeks, the medical term for rabies (lyssa) also described an extreme sort of murderous hate, an insensate, animal rage that seizes Hector in “The Iliad” and, in Euripides’ tragedy of Heracles, goads the hero to slay his own family. The Oxford English Dictionary documents how the word “rabid” found similar purchase in English during the 17th century, as a term of illness but also as a wrenching state of agitation: “rabid with anguish” (1621), “rabid Griefe” (1646).
The roots of the vampire myth stretch back nearly as far. Tales of vampire-like creatures, formerly dead humans who return to suck the blood of the living, date to at least the Greeks, before rumors of their profusion in Eastern Europe drifted westward to capture the popular imagination during the 1700s.
In its original imagining, though, the premodern vampire differed from today’s in one crucial respect: His condition wasn’t contagious. Vampires were the dead, returned to life; they could kill and did so with abandon. But their nocturnal depredations seldom served to create more of themselves.
All that changed in mid-19th century England—at the very moment when contagion was first becoming understood and when public alarm about rabies was at its historical apex. Despite the fact that Britons were far more likely to die from murder (let alone cholera) than from rabies, tales of fatal cases filled the newspapers during the 1830s. This, too, was when the lurid sexual dimension of rabies infection came to the fore, as medical reports began to stress the hypersexual behavior of some end-stage rabies patients. Dubious veterinary thinkers spread a theory that dogs could acquire rabies spontaneously as a result of forced celibacy.
Thus did rabies embody the two dark themes—fatal disease and carnal abandon—that underlay the burgeoning tradition of English horror tales. Britain’s first popular vampire story was published in 1819 by John Polidori, formerly Lord Byron’s personal physician. The sensation it caused was due largely to the fact that its vampire, a self-involved, aristocratic Lothario, distinctly resembled the author’s erstwhile employer.
But Polidori’s Byronic ghoul only seduced and killed. It took until 1845, with the appearance of James Malcolm Rymer’s serialized horror story “Varney the Vampire,” for the vampire’s bite to become a properly rabid act of infection. For the first time readers were invited to linger on the vampire’s teeth, which protrude “like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like.” And at the long tale’s end, Varney’s final victim (a girl named Clara) is herself transformed into a vampire and has to be destroyed in her grave with a stake.
Both these innovations carried over into the most important vampire tale of all, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” In Stoker’s hands, the vampire becomes a contagious, animalistic creature, and his condition is properly rabid. It is a lunge too far to claim (as one Spanish doctor has done in a published medical paper) that the vampire myth derived literally from rabies patients, misunderstood to be the walking dead. But it is clear that this central act of undead fiction—the bite, the infection, the transferred urge to bite again—has rabies knit into its DNA.
Over time, the vampire’s contagion infected his undead cousin, too. The original zombie myth, as it derived from Haitian lore, also involved the dead brought back to kill, but again without contagion—an absence that carried over to Hollywood’s earliest zombie flicks. In this and many other regards, the most influential zombie tale of the 20th century was nominally a vampire tale: Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel “I Am Legend,” whose marauding hordes of contagious “vampires,” victims of an apocalyptic infection, set the whole template for what we now think of as the standard zombie onslaught.
Since then, as Hollywood has felt the need to conjure ever more frightening cinematic menaces, the zombie has if anything grown increasingly rabid. The antagonists in Matheson’s novel can, at times, carry on an intelligent conversation with a normal human. By the 2007 film adaptation, starring Will Smith, the infected are howling, lunging, senselessly hateful animals inside a human form. Danny Boyle, the director of “28 Days Later,” has said outright that he modeled his zombie virus on rabies. But even if he hadn’t consciously done so, the name he gave that virus—”Rage”—already draws its power from the same centuries-old supply.
Westerners don’t have much cause to fear death from rabies these days. Thanks to the availability of vaccine, human fatalities in the U.S. have dropped to a handful per year; Britain got rid of the virus entirely in 1902, succeeding in just the sort of national eradication project that apparently stymied the vampire-slaying Abraham Lincoln. Yet the infected bite, the human turned animal aggressor, menaces us as often as ever on our flat screens and nightstands.
Rabies itself may be a distant concern, but the rabid idea, like Varney the vampire, still has teeth—and it still succeeds in spreading itself.
ZOMBIE OUTBREAK – Arrested for murder, eating raw brains and making penis soup
Authorities in Papua New Guinea have arrested 29 members of a suspected cannibal cult accused of killing seven people before eating their brains and making soup from their penises.
The accused are alleged to have been part of a 1000-strong group which was formed to take on suspected witch doctors.
They believed their victims had all been involved in ‘sanguma’, or sorcery, and that they had been demanding sex and money from villagers in return for exercising their spiritual powers.
A Madang Police Commander, Anthony Wagambie, confirmed reports that the cult members had eaten the victims’ brains raw and had made soup from their penises.
“They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong; they admit what they’ve done openly,” Wagambie said.
The group claimed witch doctors had begun charging large fees of 1,000 kina or $475 for casting out evil spirits and providing other services.
The accused also claimed the alleged witch doctors had begun demanding sex as payment.
The cult members believed that by eating the witch doctors’ body parts they would attain their spiritual powers, and become bullet-proof.
Reports claim that there could be between 700 and 1000 cult members in several remote PNG villages in the northeast interior.
The killings prompted police raids in the village of Biamb last week resulting in the 29 arrests.
The case has now been adjourned until the 17th of August so that the authorities can gather further evidence.
Whilst under the colonial rule of Australia the traditional culture of PNG retained isolated pockets of cannibalism into the latter part of the 20th century – human flesh was known as “long pig”.
In recent years there have been a number of cases of alleged witchcraft and cannibalism.
Last year a man was reportedly found eating his newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony.
In 2009 reports claim a woman was burnt alive at the stake in the Highlands town of Mount Hagen – the crime was also thought to be related to sorcery.
According to reports in The National newspaper 28 women and men appeared in court on Tuesday charged with murder – it was not clear what had happened to the 29th cult member.
Police have said they are gathering more evidence regarding the cannibalism before any charges are made relating to those crimes.
Murder is punishable by death penalty in Papua New Guinea.
Police Commander Anthony Wagambie said there could potentially be more arrests this weekend, maybe of another 100 people.
He also said that four of the victims had been murdered very recently, possibly even last week.
He added that none of the victims’ remains had been found,
“They’re probably all eaten up,” he said.
PANDEMIC – Mystery illness in Cambodia solved, doctors say
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) — The cause of a mysterious illness that has claimed the lives of more than 60 Cambodian children has been determined, medical doctors familiar with the investigation told CNN on Wednesday.
A combination of pathogens, disease-causing micro-organisms, is to blame for the illness, the World Health Organization, in conjunction with the Cambodian Ministry of Health, has concluded, the doctors said.
The pathogens include enterovirus 71, which is known to cause neurological disease; streptococcus suis, which can cause infections like bacterial meningitis in people who have close contact with pigs or with pork products; and dengue, which is transmitted by mosquitoes.
The inappropriate use of steroids, which can suppress the immune system, worsened the illness in a majority of the patients, the doctors said. The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to advise health care workers to refrain from using steroids in patients with signs and symptoms of the infection, which include severe fever, encephalitis and breathing difficulties.
While not all the microorganisms were present in each patient, doctors concluded the illness was caused by a combination of them and worsened by steroid use.
The WHO sources did not want to be identified because the results of the health organization’s investigation have not yet been made public.
“I’m very confident for the reason of the epidemic,” said Dr. Phillipe Buchy, chief of virology at the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia and one of the doctors who cracked the case.
“The first thing that goes through your mind is, is this one of the usual suspects you haven’t detected before?” said Dr. Arnaud Tarantola, chief of epidemiology and public health at the Institut Pasteur. “If it is, has it mutated, or changed in a way that it causes more severe disease? Or is it something completely new?”
On the steroids issue, Tarantola said, “When you have a dying child, you try to use what you have at hand, and they were right to try that.” But, he acknowledged, “from the cases we reviewed, almost all of the children died, and almost all of them had steroids.”
Parents face anxious wait over mystery illness
“I think we can close the case and move ahead asking different questions,” Buchy said. “Not what is the illness, but now, how long has the virus been circulating? What is the extent of the circulation of the virus? How many mild diseases are we missing? That’s the next step.”
Over the past four months, doctors at Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals in Phnom Penh have been faced with the mysterious syndrome, which kills children so fast that nearly all of those infected with it die within a day or two of being admitted to the hospital.
Dr. Beat Richner, head of the children’s hospitals — which cared for 66 patients affected by the illness, 64 of whom died — said that no new cases of the illness had been confirmed since Saturday.
Other hospitals in the country have reported similar cases, but far fewer than the children’s hospitals in the capital, which are the most popular.
In the last hours of their life, the children experienced a “total destruction of the alveola(e) in the lungs,” Richner said. Alveolae are the air sacs where oxygen enters the bloodstream.
Most of the children who have contracted the illness have come from the south of the country, though health officials cannot find what is known as a cluster — a lot of cases coming from one specific area.
By June 29, the WHO had been contacted and Cambodian officials were scrambling to instruct health providers across the country to spread information about the illness as quickly as possible.
Officials search for clues in disease killing Cambodia’s children
The WHO and the Cambodian authorities’ announcement of the situation drew criticism from Richner, who said they were “causing unnecessary panic.”
The WHO said the unexplained nature of the outbreak obliged it to communicate the information.
Over the weekend, lab tests linked enterovirus 71 (EV71) to some of the cases. But the tests didn’t solve the whole puzzle and health officials continued their investigations, noting the detection of other elements like streptococcus suis and dengue.
The link to EV71 does not particularly help in the treatment of the illness, as there is no effective antiviral treatment for severe EV71 infections and no vaccine is available.
In milder cases, EV71 can cause coldlike symptoms, diarrhea and sores on the hands, feet and mouth, according to the journal Genetic Vaccines and Therapy. But more severe cases can cause fluid to accumulate on the brain, resulting in polio-like paralysis and death.
Outbreaks of the enterovirus “occur periodically in the Asia-Pacific region,” according to the CDC. Brunei had its first major outbreak in 2006. China had an outbreak in 2008.
Adults’ well-developed immune systems usually can fend off the virus, but children are vulnerable to it, according to the CDC.
“It looks like (EV71) has emerged strongly, probably because it hadn’t circulated with the same intensity in the past years,” Tarantola said.
Reported cases of streptococcus suis have risen significantly in recent years, notably in Southeast Asia, according to a paper that appeared last year in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The rainy season in Cambodia, which lasts from May to October, is a key problem in trying to control diseases like dengue. Because of a lack of indoor plumbing in many homes, people collect rainwater in vats, creating potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
In Cambodia, as with many places around the world, parents first try treating their child at home. If that doesn’t work, they typically then go to a local clinic. A hospital visit, which often involves a long trip, is a last resort.
Hungry? Try the new zombie diet
One of my favorite episodes of the classic television series “The Twilight Zone” was 
titled “To Serve Man.” Aliens visited Earth and proceeded to help humanity solve its social, political and medical problems while setting up an exchange program. A tool was a book with the title of “To Serve Man,” which turned out to be a cookbook with recipes on how to prepare people as meals.
That imaginative episode of the sci-fi series seems to be playing out in a slightly different form the past two months. Zombie-mania is taking hold of the country, with reports of people eating each other and other creatures.
The entertainment industry is filled with movies and television shows depicting zombies in all of their mindless, flesh-eating gory glory. A cottage industry has tips, products and processes to protect humanity from the living dead.
But zombies aren’t just for entertainment anymore. They have infiltrated real life.
Following the news recently has been a trip through weirdville, with reports on cannibalism and assorted stomach-turning events. Movies, television shows and social media conversations have elevated the topic to near maniacal status, focusing especially on the zombie potential.
One of the first reports came from Miami on May 26, as police shot a naked man eating another man’s face. A few days later, a college student in Maryland told police he killed a man and then ate his heart and part of his brain.
Then things got really weird. In New Jersey, a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police, who then pepper-sprayed him but still had a hard time bringing him down.
Also in May, police discovered a video that appeared to show Canadian porn performer Luka Magnotta, 29, slashing his bound young lover with an ice pick. He then reportedly abused and dismembered the corpse before eating some of the man’s remains with a knife and fork. Detectives in Montreal allege Magnotta then mailed some body parts to members of the Canadian Parliament. Magnotta was arrested about two weeks later in Germany.
The lunacy continued with other reports in June, including one of a man who ate his dog.
While some are equating the rise of this type of incident to zombies and end-of-the-world prophecies, cooler heads are blaming a more mundane and man-made cause: drug abuse. The New Jersey event is being specifically blamed on a drug mixture known as “bath salts.”
Florida officials describe bath salts as a synthetic drug that reportedly produces “an extreme high of euphoria” and is comparable to amphetamines and cocaine. The mixture is sold as potpourri and incense at liquor stores, gas stations and head shops. Officials said in order to know exactly what is in each package you have to seize them from the store and test them in a lab.
Some state legislatures, Michigan included, have taken steps to outlaw the product. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released a statement saying there is no Zombie Apocalypse on the horizon.
Personally, I think the CDC’s statement is just a diversion to hide the truth.
In the meantime, bolt the doors, stockpile the food and keep your loaded weapons nearby. Remember, zombies are already dead. The only way they can be stopped is by destroying the brain, according to people who have studied this sort of thing.