Rabies Resistant Peruvian Mutants?

• Six Peruvians have survived - without treatment - the bite of rabid vampire bats.
• They live in remote villages far from civilization along the Amazon, where locals endure frequent, typically deadly, vampire attacks.
• Medical researchers agree that an untreated rabies infection in a human would be invariably fatal, that "nearly everyone who is found to be experiencing clinical symptoms of rabies dies"

While those in the know realize that vampire bats don't kill by draining the blood of their victims - they're far too small for that - they represent an important vector in the spread of rabies. In fact, the bats manage to lap up as much blood as they do by use of a factor in their saliva known as draculin which prevents the clotting and coagulation of the blood.

Until now, all medical experts were in agreement that rabies if left untreated is uniformly fatal. Were they wrong? Were they misleading us? Or ... has something different arisen in the Peruvian jungle?
Why has the Peruvian government not released DNA analyses of the survivors?
When will the Centers for Disease Control admit that the Peruvian Six carry a rabies-resistant mutation?
Which of the world's military organizations will be first to genetically enhance its soldiers with resistance to rabies - and then to develop similar mutations to protect against anthrax and other bio-weaponry?

We will report back here as we receive more information.

Posted by Listener 43

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Maybe Their Minds Are Occupied

Here's the latest bunch of idiocy from the nation's capital.
Thanks to the top-drawer cleanliness and public hygiene practices by the 0ccupiers, there's a huge rat infestation - and I don't mean the human variety, I'm talking Rattus Norvegicus, our good friend the plain old brown rat - that threatens the public health.
 
In the typical turn common-sense on its head tradition of these bozos (and let me apologize to the real Bozo who wasn't a bozo in the lower case sense at all, may he rest in peace), the fear of PETA has been put into the DC administration so they're not going to do any trapping or poisoning or anything that might help to get rid of these vermin; instead they're possibly going to do a bit of live trapping and then release them somewhere else so they're someone else's problem instead of theirs, but rats are pretty good at finding their original location so they're going to get a bunch of them back there in DC anyway and then they'll find out that these nasty little buggers carry lepto and rabies and all those other good things that took out Raccoon City in those games and movies.

OK, that last bit is just my hyperbole acting up, but my meds are kicking in and the rest of it is true - just wait until no-animal-product-wearing former hippies and hippie wannabes find out that their little dogs are all dying of leptospirosis because the breeders wouldn't let them be vaccinated for it and their PETA friends have made sure that the rats are protected so their dogs aren't: "What, you mean I've picked a rat over Fifi?" That's right, you moron, you picked a pest over your pet! And then you're going to find that these nasty critters are a nice vector for rabies, and it's not just your pets that can get that - and they are probably vaccinated anyway - but your kids who want to play with that nice brown animal in the park are going to find out that people can get rabies just as much as dogs and cats and rats and everything.

Yeah, it's all fun and games until somebody starts getting shots in the gut to take care of a rat bite.

What a bunch of dopes.

Posted by Lewis Cannon

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