“Just got off with USDA,” said Davies. They were in Stanton’s office at the Prion Center. “No positive tests for prion at any of the major meat packagers. Nothing suspicious in the herd records or feed logs.”
Davies wore the vest and pants from a pin-striped three-piece suit, and his long brown hair was so perfectly set on his head, it looked like a toupee. He was the only lab rat Stanton had known who wore a suit, his way of showing Americans how much more civilized their British cousins were.
“I want to see the tests myself,” Stanton said, rubbing his eyes. He was having trouble fighting his exhaustion.
“That’s just the big farms,” Davies replied, smirking. “USDA couldn’t cover all the small farms if they had a year. Never mind the sheep and pigs. Somewhere out there, some careless bugger is probably still grinding up contaminated brains or whatever the hell else and shipping them to God-knows-where.”
Tracking the original source was crucial in any food-borne illness. Vegetables with E. coli had to be traced back to the farms where they were grown, so the farms could be shut down and their wares pulled from the shelves. Salmonella had to be traced back to the chicken coop, so every egg could be recalled. It could be the difference between one victim and thousands.
Stanton and his team didn’t even know what animal source to concentrate on. Cows’ prions could obviously cross the species barrier, so beef was the first suspect. But pigs had prions remarkably similar to those of cows. And a prion disease called scrapie had killed hundreds of thousands of sheep throughout Europe; Stanton had long feared lamb might one day carry mutated prions to humans too.
Once they figured out what got John Doe sick, the real work of containment would begin. The unnatural way meat was processed and packaged meant flesh from a single animal could be distributed across thousands of different products and end up all over the world. Stanton had traced meat from a single cow to jerky in Columbus and hamburgers in Düsseldorf.
“I want people on the ground checking all the local hospitals,” he told Davies. John Doe was the only case so far, but prion disease was difficult to diagnose, and Stanton was convinced there could be more out there. “See if they’ve had any unusual cases of insomnia. Or any other unusual admissions. And check the psych ERs for anyone coming in with delusions or strange behavior.”
Davies smiled. “That would be everyone in L.A.” After matters sartorial, making fun of the Southland was his primary amusement.
“What else?” Stanton asked.
“Cavanagh called.”
As head of prion investigations for the CDC, Stanton reported to the deputy director. Emily Cavanagh was known for her preternatural calm, but she also understood how serious prion disease was and took nothing lightly. After butting countless heads over money and treatment protocols, Stanton had enemies in Atlanta; Cavanagh was one of the few who remained an ally.
“What are we calling this thing anyway?” Davies asked.
“VFI for now,” Stanton said. “Variant fatal insomnia. But you find me where it came from and we’ll call it Davies’s disease.”
STANTON LISTENED TO a dozen new investigation-related voice mails before he heard Nina’s voice.
“Got your messages,” she said, “and I assume this is another one of your ploys to get me to go vegan or whatever. Don’t worry. Most of the meat in the fridge was ancient and needed to be thrown out anyway. Guess your furry friend and I’ll survive on fish out here for a while. Call me back when you can. And be careful.”
Stanton glanced at his team, seated at their microscopes. Per orders from CDC headquarters in Atlanta, they weren’t supposed to tell anyone about the possibility of meat-borne illness yet. Every time there was even a hint of a possibility of mad cow, the public panicked, beef futures collapsed, and billions of dollars were lost. So Stanton hadn’t told Nina about John Doe. He’d just hinted that it would be a very good idea to listen to what he’d been saying all these years about not eating meat.
“Dr. Stanton, I’ve got slides.”
One of his postdocs waved him over. Stanton hung up the phone and hurried to a protective hood on the opposite side of the lab. Jiao Chen was sitting next to Michaela Thane. Stanton had invited Thane to the lab after her shift at Presbyterian ended so she could stay in on the ground floor of the investigation. If and when a case of meat-borne FFI broke, he wanted to make sure credit was given where it was due.
“The shape is identical to FFI,” Jiao said, surrendering her seat. “But you won’t believe the progression. It’s moving so much faster.”
Stanton looked through the sights of the powerful electron microscope. Normal prion proteins were shaped like helices, like DNA, but here the helices had unwound and refolded into what looked like accordion fans.
“How long’s it been since the baseline was taken?” Stanton asked.
Jiao answered, “Only two hours.”
The prions he was used to progressed over a course of months or longer. In investigating mad cow victims, he often had to go back three or four years to find the contaminated meat. But these proteins were changing faster than anything Stanton had ever seen. With the speed of a virus.
“At this rate,” Jiao said, “it’ll take over the entire thalamus within a matter of days. And then only a few more days before brain death.”
“The infection must have been recent,” Stanton said.
Jiao nodded. “If it weren’t, he’d be dead already.”
Stanton looked up at Davies. “We have to try the antibodies.”
“Gabe…”
“What antibodies?” Thane asked.
It was their most recent attempt at a cure, Stanton explained. Humans couldn’t mount an “antibody” defense against foreign prions because the immune system confused them with the normal prion proteins in the brain. So the Prion Center team had “knocked out” these normal prions in mice (one of the side effects was making them unafraid of snakes) and then injected them with abnormal prions. The mice produced antibodies to the foreign prion, which could be harvested and theoretically used as a treatment. Stanton and his team hadn’t gotten it to work in a human yet, but it had shown considerable potential in a petri dish.
Davies said, “Believe me, no one wants to tell the FDA to go screw themselves more than I do. But, Gabe, you don’t need another lawsuit.”
Thane asked, “What lawsuit?”
“We don’t need to go into this,” Stanton said.
“It’s quite relevant,” Davies said. He turned to Thane. “He gave a victim of genetic prion disease an unapproved treatment.”
“The family asked for antibody therapy,” Jiao interjected, “and then after he gave it, and the patient didn’t make it, they changed their minds.”
Thane shook her head. “Gotta love patient families. The old hypocritic oath.”
They were interrupted by another of the postdocs. Christian wasn’t wearing the earbuds through which he usually played hardcore rap at all hours—an undeniable sign of the heightened tension in the lab. “The cops called again,” he said. “They searched the Super 8 motel room where they picked up our John Doe, and they found a receipt from a Mexican restaurant. It’s right by the hotel.”
“Where do they source their meat from?” Stanton asked.
“Industrial farm in the San Joaquin. They put out about a million pounds of beef a year. They haven’t had any breaches, but they also do their own rendering.”
Stanton glanced at his partner.
“It’s possible,” Davies said.