The Laptev Virus

“And it turns out that Drew’s hunch is correct. The incidence of human behavioral alterations, many people call it mental illness, coincidentally began to skyrocket at about the time it became popular to have cats inside the home. Coincidence? I think not. We don’t know for sure, but more and more evidence indicates that the increase in crazy, irrational and antisocial behavior among humans is quite possibly caused by a huge increase in undetected and untreated Toxoplasmosis infections in the population of people who own cats or have come into contact with cats. Which is pretty much everyone.”

No one spoke for a moment while they thought about what Emile had just said. At one point Kevin’s cell phone beeped, but he quickly silenced it.

“So, if I understand you correctly, Emile, you’re saying that people got crazier the more cats were kept indoors?” asked Angela.

Emile nodded, and opened up the lid to his laptop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” said Angela, tossing her head dismissively. “I swear I’ve never heard anything like that in all my life!”

Emile was unperturbed by her reaction and continued to tap on the keys of his laptop, calling up the name of another file. Then, punching the “Enter” button with a flourish, he said, “Well, that’s what the records are showing. Take a look. It was in the seventeen hundreds when mental illness started to become much more prevalent in our society.”

“Wow,” said Tally.

“Look, if you don’t believe me,” said Emile, turning his screen toward Angela. “Here are the articles that I bookmarked.”

Everyone leaned in and Sarah could see the tabs of the various articles.

Emile began clicking on each one of them. “It’s contemporary stuff. There’s this investigator, lives in Czechoslovakia. Great story. He began examining himself when he found that he was exhibiting what he considered strange behavior. He wasn’t afraid to jaywalk even in traffic and wasn’t afraid of speaking up against the fascist regime that could imprison him for doing so. He saw that all of his friends and colleagues were afraid and so he began to wonder why he wasn’t and if it could be that something was physically wrong with his brain. He had a blood sample taken and found that he had the Toxoplasmosis infection. After that he started studying brain cysts caused by Toxo and sure enough, those behaviors were typical of other men who had the infection.”

“You mean other people, don’t you?” said Angela.

“No, oddly enough, men have different reactions to the infection than women. Men who are infected become more aggressive and take more risks whereas women who are infected become more social and take fewer risks. It’s pretty odd,” said Emile.

Sarah passed Emile the plug to connect his computer to the projector and soon his screen was visible on the whiteboard. He clicked on the first article and Sarah began skimming through it, her mouth slightly open as she read.

“So,” said Emile, “before we know more about what Toxo does, we cannot even consider it as a ‘weapon.’ We would need to do a lot more studies.”

Shane frowned but did not say anything else. Instead he opened up his own laptop and began tapping away.

“All right, I think it’s pretty clear that Emile has a good point,” said Rhonda, looking at both Sarah and Angela. “But where does that leave us now? What’s the next step?”

Angela was silent so Sarah said, “Well, what if we try to take a look at how Toxoplasmosis is protecting its host, the mouse, from the virus? Maybe there’s a chemical or a group of compounds that it’s producing, and if we can isolate them and characterize them, maybe we can reproduce them and use them to cure or protect people who might acquire Laptev HFV? Maybe if we can give them the chemical, instead of the whole infection, we could avoid having cysts in our brains to fight the virus.”

CHAPTER 24

That evening as John cooked dinner and Sarah sat at the kitchen table, peeling carrots, he said, “Sarah, I need to go over some results with you. I’ve been reading a lot more about Toxoplasmosis infections, since we found out that the mice have it. And do you remember how we were talking about the fact that the infected mice behaved differently? Well it turns out that this happens not only in mice, but in humans as well.”

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “One of my researchers, Emile, do you remember him? He said the same thing in our meeting this morning—that it makes people crazier, though I’m not sure if everyone believed him.”