A COUPLE OF YEARS LATER, Jim Murphy came down with pneumonia, and he went downhill fast. When it was clear that he was dying, I called him to say good-bye. As he got on the line, I could hear a hubbub of voices in the background. A lot of people had come to see him, and they were milling around in his hospital room and in the hallway. He seemed to be handling his situation calmly. “I’ll be all right,” he said to me, and added, “Take care with your driving.”
Another day, before Jim Murphy died, I visited James Elrod. Tracye Overby, who was working as Elrod’s assistant that day, needed to change the silk liners he wore inside his motorcycle gloves.
Elrod did not like to see his bare hands. He asked me to hold his wrists while Overby removed his gloves. It occurred to me that I had never seen his hands. The hands that emerged were pale, with spindly fingers that had been gnawed close to the bone in places, and a finger was missing. “Danger,” he said. His eyes took on a strange, bright, blank look. He was staring at the right hand. His arm was tense and trembling. As if a magnet were pulling it, the hand moved toward his mouth. His mouth opened, wider and wider, baring his teeth…. “Help!” he called in a muffled voice.
We threw ourselves on Elrod. It took all our strength to restrain his hand. As soon as we got control of it, he relaxed. Overby got the gloves back on him.
“Nobody knows about this disease. Every day I’m hoping for a cure,” Elrod said. “I wanted you to see that.”
Glossary
arthropod A segmented invertebrate with a hard exoskeleton made of chitin. Examples: spiders, mites, insects, crustaceans.
basal ganglia An area in the lower part of the brain, the size of a lemon, that influences many aspects of behavior.
behavioral phenotype A pattern of actions and behavior traceable to the influence of a gene or genes in the DNA.
biohazard space suit A pressurized whole-body protective suit made of soft, flexible plastic, with a soft helmet, worn by researchers working in Biosafety Level 4 (BL-4) laboratories.
Biosafety Level 4 (BL-4) The highest level of biocontainment security.
Celera Genomics A division of the Applera Corporation devoted to genomic and proteomic discovery to advance the practice of medicine.
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal organization, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for the detection and prevention of human disease, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
chromosome A small elongated body in the nucleus of a cell in which a portion of the organism’s DNA is tightly coiled, for storage. Human cells have two sets of twenty-three chromosomes (for a total of forty-six chromosomes).
Chudnovsky Mathematician, the The brothers David and Gregory Chudnovsky assert that functionally they are a single mathematician who happens to occupy two human bodies.
decon shower A chemical decontamination shower used in the air lock entry/exit module of a Biosafety Level 4 lab.
DNA sequencing Determination of the sequence of nucleotides, or letters, in a strand of DNA.
ecotone A boundary-like habitat in nature where different kinds of ecosystems come into contact and mix.
Eddington number, the The number of protons and electrons in the observable universe. The Eddington number is roughtly 1079, or a 1 followed by seventy-nine zeros; it was first proposed by the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington in 1938.
epistaxis Nosebleed.
EST Expressed sequence tag. An easily identifiable sequence of letters in DNA, typically located near the end of a gene.
gene A stretch of the DNA, typically a thousand to fifteen hundred letters long, that holds the recipe for making a protein or a group of proteins in an organism.
genetic disease An inherited illness or impairment that is passed from parents to their offspring in a gene or genes in the DNA. A genetic disease is not contagious.
genome, human The total amount of DNA that is spooled into a set of chromosomes in the nucleus of every typical human cell.
genomics The sequencing and study of genes in DNA.
gout A disease, first identified by doctors at the time of Hippocrates, in which crystals of uric acid build up in the extremities, especially the big toe, causing severe pain.
Home Depot thing, the (or It) A powerful computer built by mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky.
host An organism in or on which a parasite lives.
hot zone, hot suite A Biosafety Level 4 biocontainment laboratory.
HPRT protein A protein produced by all cells in the human body, used for recycling purines (by-products of the processing of DNA). When HPRT is absent from cells, due to a defect in a gene, the result in humans is Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. The full name of this protein is hypoxanthine- guanine phosphoribosyl transferase.
Human Genome Project, the A nonprofit international research consortium that deciphered the complete sequence of nucleotides, or letters, in the human DNA.
IMAS Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing, at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn. Principally occupied by David and Gregory Chudnovsky (the Chudnovsky Mathematician).
Institute, the Nickname for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
It
J. Craig Venter Institute A nonprofit institute dedicated to research in genomics, founded and run by genomic scientist J. Craig Venter.
Lesch-Nyhan syndrome A rare genetic disease, almost invariably expressed in males, in which the patient engages in compulsive acts of self-injury. It was first characterized in 1962 by medical researcher William L. Nyhan and medical student Michael Lesch at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Ludolphian number, the The same number as pi (p). The name is derived from Ludolph van Ceulen, a German mathematician of the seventeenth century who approximated pi to thirty-five decimal places and had the digits engraved on his tombstone.
m zero A powerful supercomputer constructed largely of mail-order parts by the mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky. Predecessor to the Home Depot thing.
Mbwambala A patch of disturbed woodland about three miles long and half a mile wide that wanders along a stream about six miles southeast of the city of Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) A federally funded collection of medical research institutes situated on a campus in Bethesda, Maryland, that both conducts and funds many billions of dollars in medical research every year.
nucleotide An information-carrying building block, or “letter,” of DNA. There are four nucleotides in DNA: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine; they are designated by the letters A, T, C, and G.
number theory The mathematical study of the properties of numbers.
