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Biotech Science

15-Year-Old Girl Survives Rabies Infection 146

Posted by timothy from the not-quite-out-of-the-woods dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 15 y.o. girl in Wisconsin is the first known survivor of a rabies infection who did not receive the vaccine. She was placed into an induced coma while doctors gave her a cocktail of drugs to help her immune system fight the infection. (For those of us who don't realize this, rabies is considered 100% fatal once symptoms appear)."
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15-Year-Old Girl Survives Rabies Infection More

15-Year-Old Girl Survives Rabies Infection

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  • Hugs for her family.

    Scary shit.

  • News article with more details (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pervertus ( 637664 ) <t8jlcfw02@sneake ... Tcom minus punct> on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @05:19PM (#10913360) Journal
    More details about this story here [news-leader.com].
  • ..her family prayed. /me rolls eyes
    • When you get rabies and don't get the vaccine, that's about as good of a treatment as anything else.

      I'm amazed that she's still alive. It will be interesting to see how she recovers.

    • No, the article gives the family's explanation for why she got better. And, y'know what? If she was my daughter and she came down with rabies, I'd kneel so fast my knees would break Mach One--and I don't even believe in an interventionist God.

      Are you really so completely lacking in compassion, empathy, the ability to understand someone else's problems? Their daughter contracted an essentially 100% fatal illness. If they want to credit their belief in pink unicorns for her daughter's recovery, more powe

      • Re:The article explains why she got better.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by UranusReallyHertz ( 567776 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @05:53PM (#10913654)
        What bothers me is how people always credit prayer while ignoreing the advanced medical care the girl recieved. Maybe, just maybe, that had something to do with it? The logical extreme of this beleif is faith-healers who refuse medical attention. I've read a story about a young boy with a tumor on his head so large he couldn't actually lift it anymore and his idiot parents jast kinda watched and prayed. Ugh.
        • Advanced medical care? Those doctors were essentially stabbing in the dark. This has not successfully been done before.

        • Re:The article explains why she got better.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jefu ( 53450 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @06:31PM (#10914042) Homepage Journal
          What bothers me when people credit prayer is that for every "success" there are probably many "failures". "God answered my prayers and saved my child." is an implicit claim that God didn't answer someone else's prayers. Thus someone who dies must either themselves be un-favored by God or the person doing the praying must be somehow lacking. From God's point of view ("Point Of View"?) it may make sense, but it seems less than comforting for those who've suffered a loss.
          • Not to drag this even deeper into a theological debate, but I find it odd that when prayers are unanswered the common reply is that "it was god's will" whereas when a prayer is answered the prayer itself is credited. Was your omniscient buddy asleep at the wheel and didn't notice until you gave him a heads-up? Is your diety responsive to bribes and begging?

            Assuming a given of an interventionist, omnipotent, omniscient force (... in a vacuum of course) prayer itself should have absolutely no effect. Either it'll happen or it won't. Prayer is just a method of hoping that it happens and utterly ineffective.

            • What bothers me is that there are so many humans trying to assign human values to God. There's no way you can understand the motivations of God. It's like a dog trying to understand nuclear physics.

              The bible says "Ask, and it will be given." Christ tells us that we need to be insistent. We're supposed to take everything to God in prayer.

              Prayer may or may not be effective. There's no way to empiracally prove it one way or the other. Spending all of this time arguing about it, whether because you want

              • Faith.... it's an interesting thing.

                It can also be a dangerous thing, which is why many people are wary of it. Faith can be abused fairly easily and turned into an enemy of reason.

                • Absolutely. Burn the religionists. They're dangerous.
                • I hate to say it but the sureness of reason is also often abused. I have meet many people that follow this like of logic. I am do not believe in supernatural things. I believe only in logic. I am logical so everything I believe must be logical. If you question what I believe you must be illogical.
                  The only problem is that almost everyone has some thing illogical that they believe in. From the harmless lucky socks to racism. Often a lack of faith in God becomes a mindless faith in self.
                  Yes Faith is what cause

              • Re:The article explains why she got better.. (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @08:50PM (#10914981) Homepage
                I find the "Yahweh is complex" argument to be a cop out. You start with the premise that you want to believe in yahweh, then come up with beliefs about your god to justify it (without modifying any of your original premise). Prayer doesn't seem to effect much, so people come up with "god isn't understandable" argument. I guess.. but you ignore other equally plausible explanations. Maybe this yahweh person doesn't exist, or he's an evil god who just likes seeing people ask for things they won't get. Maybe yahweh does exist, but there's some secret code you need to put at the beginning for your prayer to get through. Ah, but that would be science. Religion doesn't like to modify its beliefs based on evidence.


                Prayer may or may not be effective. There's no way to empiracally prove it one way or the other. Spending all of this time arguing about it, whether because you want to support your own belief in no God, or because you're scared of it, or for whatever other reason is pointless.

                Pointless? How is a determining if your methods of curing disease actually help or not pointless? If it were we would have a great tool against curing disease. If all you're doing is helping people get through a tough time, hey that's great.. but wouldn't you rather know that?

                It all seems far to convienent. Faith seems to boil down to "I want to believe, and will justify it by whatever means necessary". That's fine I guess, but stop trying to argue it's truth.

                • Isn't calling the argument a cop out a cop out itself? You can't reasonably argue with it one way or the other. You're just affronted by it, because it assumes that you are less than what God is, which is essentially true.

                  You can't back up faith with science or reason, nor can you deny it with science or reason.

                  And no. There is no secret code. God is also not evil, because being evil is defined in God's eyes as denying God. Prayer also does effect much, but it is usually answered in a way that you do


                  • You can't reasonably argue with it one way or the other. You're just affronted by it, because it assumes that you are less than what God is, which is essentially true.
                    I think I just _did_ argue with it. You can believe what you want, but that doesn't mean it stands up to examination. It doesn't have anything to do with "being less than yahweh" (I resent the implication that this yahweh character is the only possible god). It has to do with religious beliefs not standing up to examination. Oh, but that
              • Which reminds me of a great (and possibly educational) little story.

                A priest gets marooned on a desert island when his boat sinks.

                His first inclination is to pray to God. He feels sure that God will save him.

                Nothing happens for some time, so he prays each day and ekes out a living on the island. One day, as he is busy praying, a huge eagle lands in front of him and looks at him, waiting for something. He sees the eagle and continues to pray, because he knows God will save him.

                More time passes, and ev
            • Perhaps this could make it more clear:

              "Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work, and is an appointed means for obtaining the h

              • to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them.

                A classic bit of religious legalese to explain why the giant wizard in the sky acts like a complete shit most of the time. If the girl in question had been out hiking when she was bitten and fell into a coma before realising that what was going on and before she was expected back, what chance does that give her?

                Religion is the state of believing that writing "factual"

                • Love the "factual" bit. Reminds me of this one:

                  Harry fell down the stairs, broke his neck, and died.

                  His partner rushes up to him, and says "Harry's dead!"

                  Rose says "Give him some chicken soup."

                  "Rose, I said Harry's dead!"

                  "I heard you, already. Give him some chicken soup."

                  "He's dead. Chicken soup isn't going to help!"

                  "Couldn't hurt ..."

                  Sure, prayer won't help ... but it couldn't hurt, at least that's the way a lot of people feel. As long as they're not substituting prayer for seeking competent medica

        • the difference between this and other "power of prayer" stories is that some families deny medical help for their child and rely solely on the healing of prayer.

          I remember reading an article about a family who's daughter died from an earache because they refused medical help.

          At least they took her to a doctor.
        • "the logical extreme of this belief is faith-healers who refuse medical attention. "
          No it is not the logical extreme it is the illogical extreme. These people got the latest and greatest medical treatment for their child. The logical extreme of this is. "All truth comes from the Lord. Medical advances are of the lord. Thank you for the gifts that you gave the doctors, Thank you for the the gifts of the researchers that discovered the drugs that helped. Thank you for the time I will have with my daughter."
        • Yes, but that advanced medical care is almost always (in all but 3 (now 4) other cases) useless, as rabies KILLS. Obviously, they believe in medical science, which is why they went to the doctors in the first place. If, however, you don't like the idea of prayer... what's so different about this girl? (yes, I'm 100% aware that this is what science will have to research).

      • Re:The article explains why she got better.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @06:40PM (#10914110)
        What the parent post objects to, and I fully share his consternation, is the statement:

        "Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery."

        Did they credit the highly skilled medical DOCTORS that administered her treatment? Did they credit the countless SCIENTISTS who have spent years developing highly selective and complex molecules which inhibit viral reproduction and allowed thier daughter to live? Did they credit the NURSES who cared for thier daughter in the hospital? No, and none of these were even mentioned. So do I sneer at hope? No, I do however sneer at the shameful insult of crediting to supernatural powers that which should be credited to the people who actually did save someone's life.

      • Re:The article explains why she got better.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @08:07PM (#10914701)
        If you want to sneer at hope, then to hell with you.

        I sneer at ignorance. It isn't that they prayed. It is that they credit the success to prayer above the actions of the doctors. It is that they don't accept responsibility for not treating their knowingly-bitten daughter in a timely manner. I'd think that the anti-viral drugs administered had something to do with the recovery, but the parents obviously think that prayer did more than modern medicine. If they thought so little about modern medicine, why even bother bringing in their child?

      • If they want to credit their belief in pink unicorns for her daughter's recovery, more power to 'em.
        I guess I really think people should credit things they know to be of actual help rather than things that have been never been show to be of help other than to the prayers.

        If praying helps you deal with the situation, hey whatever gets you through the night. But when you start advocating it as a means to solve medical problems, I've got a problem with that. The christian scientists do it, and I'll derid

      • Are you really so completely lacking in compassion, empathy, the ability to understand someone else's problems? Their daughter contracted an essentially 100% fatal illness.

        It's only fatal if you don't get the vaccine soon after being bitten. If you do get the vaccine then your chances of survival are fairly good.

        Who wants to bet she didn't get the vaccine because her religious parents forbade it.

        Is it desperate? Yes. Superstitious? Yes. Is it hope? Yes. If you want to sneer at hope, then to he

      • By all means pray, but if, in your hypothetical situation, dozens of medical professionals were involved, did something terribly clever, and you still said it was cos you'd got down on your knees - at whatever speed - then, yes, I'd sneer at you.

        Justin.
    • After praying, the family should have taken her to a doctor for a rabies shot . Usually, rabies is fatal because kids are afraid to admit they were playing with a sick bat/racoon/etc, not because they copped to it and their parents didn't get them a shot. WTF?

      Get bit by a wild animal? Get a rabies shot. Doing anything else is totally stupid.

    • /me thinks your a jackass.

    • Whether or not God exists is irrelivant.

      My mother had serious medical problems last year that would have killed 999 out of a thousand people.

      She told everyone that would listen that God had given her the gift of a new life and she never ever ever blamed God for putting her in a position that would require a miracle for her to survive.

      Everytime a doctor gave her a timeline on recovery my mother marked her calender, in ink, because she new God would heal her.

      At every step of the way she had a positive at
      • eh, my grandmother was told in 1981, just after my mother died, that her stomach and ovarian cancer would kill her "within about 6-8 months". Her doctor went into the Peace Corp, and died of apparently absolutely nothing while working in a field, about 6 months after telling her that.

        My grandmother passed away 4 weeks after I graduated from High School, in 1994.

        She always attributed it to that when my mother told her that she "didn't think she was coming back" the last time mother went to the hospital, m

    • ..her family prayed. /me rolls eyes

      Ignoring the whole "does $deity exist?" question, there are still several benefits of faith.

      One of which is longer, healthier lives, with less illness and healthier immune systems.

      Roll your eyes all you want, but studies have shown that in addition to many other benefits, faith tends to reduce stress, which benefits human health. In the girl's case, it was luck that she survived -- but luck favors those who were prepared. It sounds as though she had a strong, s

    • Just to play Devil's advocate here.... ;-p and RANT:

      IF someone believes in God and God's miracles, those miracles include science and discovery... only asshole pseudo-suretorepentontheirdeathbed-aethists think that God is a supernatural force that shows up like some D&D demigod/deity and conjures up some white healing magic to heal them.. it's not fantasy people it's the power of God, who created everything, including all the stuff modern scientists have REDISCOVERD over the last two hundred years, jus
  • Guess the submitter didn't RTFA this time... Three people in the world are known to have survived after the onset of rabies symptoms I remember reading in a Reader's Digest around 1970 about a young boy who survived rabies. They didn't induce a coma, but treated everything that happened from the rabies symptomatically.

    • The first without the vaccine (Score:5, Informative)

      by wscott ( 20864 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @05:34PM (#10913487) Homepage
      From the other article [news-leader.com]:
      Prior to Giese, there were only five documented cases of survival once clinical symptoms from rabies appeared, but each person had been immunized against the virus after being bitten

    • Re:Not the first (Score:4, Informative)

      by pkhuong ( 686673 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @05:38PM (#10913528) Homepage
      Yeah, but were the three other people vaccinated?

      *Adds more content* BTW, rabies has quite an itneresting way of spreading. Our neurons can be a meter long or more, and there's next to no metabolic activity on the axonal end (when compared to the pericaryon, the neuron's body). So, for the rest of the neuron to feed and communicate with the axon, there are two transport systems that go both ways. Rabies simply hitchhikes the slow stream that goes upstream to the pericharyon to travel from the periphery to the middle of the body :) That explains why we vaccinate people against rabbies after the fact: if the virus entered the body far enough from the central nervous system, the vaccine may have enough time to do its job. So, erh, if you ever have to be bitten by a rabid animal, make sure it bites you on the foot and not on the face!
      • >> So, erh, if you ever have to be bitten by a rabid animal, make sure it bites you on the foot and not on the face!

        That is very true. My mother (a nurse) treated a boy who was bitten on the face by a rabid dog, many years ago. They kept him on a morphine drip until he died, once he started to show symptoms.

        Some clarification: All the other survivors (5, accourding to other news sources) did recieve the vaccine. The developed symptoms, but lived - the only people to do so. Usually, if you get the va

      • Re:Not the first (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 )
        > Our neurons can be a meter long or more, and there's next to no metabolic activity on the axonal end (when compared to the pericaryon, the neuron's body). So, for the rest of the neuron to feed and communicate with the axon, there are two transport systems that go both ways. Rabies simply hitchhikes the slow stream that goes upstream to the pericharyon to travel from the periphery to the middle of the body :)

        So while we're at it -- how does that play in to the induced coma as part of the treatment?

        • the induced coma as part of the treatment

          Infecting and disruptings neurons causes spasms and seisures. Naturally flopping around like a tipped-over windup toy tends to exacerbate the inflamation.

          -
        • They never administered the vaccine at all, which was the point of this story.

          IANAMD either, but I can think of a few reasons they might have induced the coma. You could be right, it could have slowed the transfer of the virus and given the retrovirals (not vaccine) time to work. Another poster guessed it might be a form of immobility to help prevent her from injuring herself through involuntary muscle spasms. I'm guessing they used it to help keep the brain from swelling due to the virus. Could have

  • "only three people in the world are known to have survived after the onset of rabies symptoms"

    Unless you meant "100% fatal", which would mean those who died would be COMPLETELY dead...
    • I'll reduntantly post this reply to your redundant post.

      According to another article on the same story at http://www.news-leader.com/today/1124-Teenbetter-2 33752.html, all other known survivors had been vaccinated after symptoms appeared, while this girl never received the vaccination, ever.

      • Nice flamebait. 6:24PM is pretty close to 6:24PM in my books. Pity we don't have hundredths of a second visible on the postings, huh?

        Read the submission again. He claims 100% fatal *after symptoms*, period. Whether vaccinated or not. Are you still going to claim it's right?
  • Any explanation of why they didn't have the vaccine on hand?
    • Probably because it's so expensive..

    • Re:zerg (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jangobongo ( 812593 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @06:14PM (#10913895)
      Any explanation of why they didn't have the vaccine on hand?

      It wasn't a case of there not being a vaccine on hand, it's that you need to receive a series of vaccine shots over a period of weeks before symptoms appear, which usually happens weeks later (up to a year in some cases). This girl and/or her family, didn't seek treatment for whatever reason, early enough. Once symptoms appear, all the doctors can do is make you as comfortable as possible. It is considered to be fatal 100% of the time once the symptoms appear.

      These doctors tried a whole new approach. Protect the brain as much as possible while letting the body develop its own antibodies. While the girl's body appears to have defeated the virus (our body's self-defenses are amazing!), it's still to be determined how successful the doctors were in preventing brain damage.

  • Treatment - why it might affect you (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slowtech ( 12134 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @05:47PM (#10913597)
    It would be interesting to know a little more about the treatment. If they were using anti-virals, or something that affects the nervous system.

    Viruses that I know infect the nerves: Polio, rabies, chickenpox (herpes zoster / shingles), herpes simplex.

    There are vaccines for all but the last. Good anti-viral treatments, or anti-virals coctails that work well with nerve viruses might help with h. simplex, or h. zoster outbreaks.
    • Possibly she was just lucky that her immune system produced enough antibodies in time. I mean after all, that's how immunisation works, the immune system learns to deal with the disease, not any exogenous chemicals.
    • The treatment according to this article [news-leader.com]:
      • Using an innovative approach, a team of eight specialists at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin intentionally placed Giese into a coma within an hour after her diagnosis on Oct. 19...


      • Within three days, Giese was on a four-drug cocktail -- two anti-virals that helped salvage her brain and two anesthetics. She was never given a rabies vaccine.

      No details on which anti-virals they used. You can bet that there will be a write-up in some medical journal in the near futur

  • Most of people in US get rabbies from bats (Score:4, Informative)

    by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @06:43PM (#10914125)
    Also, it seems that the symptom profile from bat rabbies is slightly different than the textbook rabbie from rabid dog. The initial spastic phase is somewhat less pronounced with bat rabbies. Anyway, if the patient survives through the spastic phase, it is usualy the paralysis that gets him at the end. The very few survivors are vegetative.

    The brain pretty much self-destructs because of the inflamation. So in this case, they induced the coma and avoided the immunization to limit the inflamatory process.

  • power of prayer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @07:10PM (#10914311)
    Jensen said the Giese family credits the power of prayer for providing strength in Jeanna's fight with the rabies virus, and they asked for continuing prayers for her full recovery.

    The girl got bitten in church! Do they also "credit the power of prayer" that she got infected with rabies and nearly died?

    • Re:power of prayer (Score:5, Funny)

      by Danse ( 1026 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @07:53PM (#10914625)

      Do they also "credit the power of prayer" that she got infected with rabies and nearly died?

      No no no. Don't be silly. That was just The Lord testing them. He works in mysterious ways you know.

    • God only seems to get credit for the bad things he didn't do. For example, if there's an earthquake that kills thousands and leaves most of the city in ruins, and if they find an alive 5 year-old child in the rubble, then it's the work of god that he survived. If a tornado kills hundreds, but a family somewhere is found not dead, it's proof that there is an all-loving god. Yes, thank you god, for not killing me. Oh, the other thousands who died? Eh, they simply didn't believe in fairytales as much as I did.

  • Uhoh (Score:4, Funny)

    by FLAGGR ( 800770 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @07:10PM (#10914316)
    Shes a witch, burn her.

  • In related news: the rabies vaccine has a cool his (Score:4, Informative)

    by CodeWanker ( 534624 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @07:35PM (#10914483) Journal
    At least to someone like me. Louis Pasteur created it first [uspharmacist.com] by removing the spinal cords of rabbits who had died of the disease and drying them for various lengths of time. Then he'd grind them up and innoculate the victims in stages: first innoculation, from spinal cord dried for 14 days. Next one, 13 days. The victim got fresher and fresher cord powder to trigger an immune response.

    I remember reading about that in the kid-version of his biography when I was 9 years old and thinking, "Golly, he was smart."

  • Not the first (Score:4, Informative)

    by Banner ( 17158 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @07:58PM (#10914658) Journal
    She is not the first to survive it, others have survived it as well (two that I know of, one was in India I beleive). In both cases however they'd have been better off dead due to tremendous brain damage. The big problem with rabies is the swelling of the brain.

  • NPR story much more detailed (Score:4, Informative)

    by gCGBD ( 532991 ) on Wednesday November 24, 2004 @09:02PM (#10915047) Homepage
    The story on NPR tonight about the pediatrician who figured out how to save her is really an amazing work of doctoring.

    You can listen to it here [npr.org].
  • All Things Considered interviewed the doctor who apparently directed this girl's treatment (and devised a very creative approach to the problem).

    A link to the RealAudio/Windows media file is here [npr.org].

    -Troy

  • Uh oh (Score:2, Funny)

    by cuteseal ( 794590 )
    She appears to be doing better now. But soon, she'll be trying to suck your brains from out of your still screaming body. Either that, or a monstrosity will burst out from her ribcage and start stalking the medical staff...
  • Behold.. the power of... CHEESE!

    (the article says it's because of the power of prayer that she appears to be recovering.. but.. it's because she's in Wisconsin. And there's so much CHEESE!)

  • I bet... (Score:2, Funny)

    by bpd1069 ( 57573 )
    she's a vampire now...

    watch her closely...

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