Chapter 158: Ebola (1)

Young-Joon was watching the bonobos that he brought from Congo. Tomorrow, they would fly back to Salonga National Park to rejoin their original group. They were all cured. Of course, the human eye couldn’t tell how severe their illness was; how could people tell what kind of delusions bonobos had? Behaviors related to schizophrenia could be mistaken as a different disorder, such as extreme anxiety or nervousness, if it wasn’t supported by evidence like measurements of dopamine levels.

But these bonobos were probably ones that stood out in their groups, like the patients with schizophrenia in human society.

—These guys will be happy once they go back.

“I hope so. I unintentionally created another cure for animal diseases,” Young-Joon said.

—Yeah.

“This makes me think that the recent trend of blindly banning experiments with primates is not a good thing.”

—Because they have overlapping diseases?

“Yeah. HIV is originally from chimpanzees, right? And mental illnesses like schizophrenia also exist in primates. Experimenting with them could be helpful to them depending on the situation.”

—That’s right.

Rosaline stared at the bonobos.

—That one is asleep.

“Yeah.”

—That reminds me of something, Ryu Young-Joon. There have been some changes in my body through this incident.

“Changes?”

—I started thinking about the value of an independent organism as I induced the process of the mitochondria turning into organisms, and I felt my cells enter a new phase of evolution.

“What is it?”

—I am now able to run simulations over a wider area using more fitness, and I have gotten more sophisticated. The scope of the simulation can now cover an entire continent.

“...”

Young-Joon was able to see quite a wide region when he was in Simulation Mode and observing the red mold in the United States. It wasn’t continental though.

—But there’s a problem.

“What problem?”

—I have been feeling drowsy for the past few days.

“Drowsy?”

—Yes.

Young-Joon was a little confused. Was Rosaline an organism that slept?

—Animals are the only organism that sleeps. Invertebrates sleep, even the most primitive ones like nematodes. Fruit flies sleep, too.

Rosaline said.

—But I am not an animal. I am a unicellular organism.

“...”

—It is a huge penalty for animals to have evolved to sleep because when they do, they are completely defenseless against their enemies.

Rosaline said.

—The reason that almost all animals still sleep is to repair DNA damage in their cells. They had to lower their metabolism to repair the damage to their DNA from the ultraviolet light and oxygen they received during the day.

“...”

—But I can repair DNA damage without doing any of those things. Sleeping is for animals who have old, simple cells.

“... But you feel drowsy?”

—I don’t know. I’ve been feeling that way lately as I’ve been growing. I am consciously regulating it now. But I might fall asleep after using a lot of power.

“Hm...”

—Maybe it’s because I’ve changed a lot with you. We’ve come to share quite a lot of each other’s traits. Have there been any physical changes for you?

Young-Joon tilted his head, puzzled.

“I don’t think so.”

—I see.

“Have you used anything like Synchronization Mode after you’ve started to feel drowsy?”

—Yes. I’ve used it a few times. I used it recently to see Song Jong-Ho’s treatment progress.

“But you didn’t fall asleep or anything?”

—Yes.

“Alright. That means it’s safe to use that.”

—But I might sleep for a few hours if you run a simulation of an entire continent.

“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind,” Young-Joon said.

* * *

Shin Jung-Ju was the one who had carried out Young-Joon’s Alzheimer’s clinical trial. She was the first to volunteer to conduct the clinical trial as soon as the cure for schizophrenia was developed at A-Bio. The miraculous moment when Alzheimer’s was cured was still vivid in her head. It was when Park Joo-Nam, the patient she was in charge of, mentioned shaving and recognized her husband’s face. It was amazing.

After seeing the preclinical data that Young-Joon had made with bonobos, Shi Jung-Ju was certain that this was going to succeed. She didn’t know what this insane genius did, but Young-Joon created a cure for schizophrenia just a few weeks after asking about it. Shin Jung-Ju wanted to feel that incredible wonder again.

And two weeks after the administration of the treatment, Shin Jung-Ju cautiously predicted that schizophrenia had been cured. The primary doctors of the clinical trial patients also agreed with her. The medical community was extremely excited to share this huge news with the world.

—It is possible to cure schizophrenia.

A few days later, the doctors published a paper reporting the results from the clinical trial in a medical journal called the New England Journal of Medicine. It was often viewed by doctors, and it had a higher citation index than

Science

. It was the best journal for clinical research. Of course, they cited Young-Joon’s paper as a reference.

[A-Bio conquers schizophrenia.]

[The scientist who studied the illnesses of the body now explores the illnesses of the mind.]

Young-Joon was not very interested in the numerous articles that were being published. He was reading the emails in the CEO’s personal inbox. They were from people with schizophrenia and their families. They were all in different languages because they were from all over the world. He used Google Translate to read the languages he was unfamiliar with.

[Thank you, Mr. Ryu. I am a psychiatrist in Singapore. Schizophrenia is one of the most difficult diseases to treat. I was not expecting this at all, but I am so happy to see a treatment like this. I hope it will soon be out of clinical trials and on the market so that all my patients will be able to use it.]

[I came to Norway after spending five years in a monastery because they said I was possessed by the devil. When I was in the monastery in my home country, the monks tortured me by beating me and burning me to exorcize the devil. Now, I realized it was an illness. I missed my window of treatment, so I change personalities several times a day. But the treatment you developed gives me hope that I will be cured someday, Doctor Ryu.]

Young-Joon liked these emails much more than the articles that overly praised him. He felt energized when he read them.

“Sir.”

Yoo Song-Mi knocked on his door.

“Yes?”

“You have a guest from the International Vaccine Institute,” she said.

“Oh, please take him to the conference room.”

“He is already there.”

“Yes, thank you. I’ll head there right now.”

Young-Joon quickly got up.

Jason Kim, the director general of the International Vaccine Institute, contacted Young-Joon. He said that he wanted to have a meeting with him about the eradication of HIV and Ebola. That was the meeting they were having today.

* * *

Jason Kim was waiting in the conference room while sipping some tea that Yoo Song-Mi prepared for him.

“Hello, Mr. Director General.”

Young-Joon entered the conference room and greeted him brightly.

“It’s nice to see you, Doctor Ryu.”

They shook hands and sat down.

“Should we start off with the HIV eradication project?”

Jason pulled out a few documents from his bag.

“First of all, this is the greatest achievement,” he said as he pushed a document towards Young-Joon. “The Indian government succeeded in controlling HIV in Kamathipura, Mumbai.”

“Wow.”

Young-Joon had heard that the HIV infection rate had gone down to the negatives in sub-Saharan Africa, but this was the first time he was hearing about Kamathipura. It had only been a few months, but it felt nostalgic, like a distant memory.

‘I wonder how Ardip is doing.’

Jason said, “The Indian government focused on Kamathipura once it was selected as the first-priority area to eradicate HIV and the world took interest in it. They got rid of most of the pimps and gangsters, and the cops who had a cozy relationship with them. Kaamthipura is pretty much destroyed now.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“And we’re actively fighting HIV with the massive amounts of the treatment and diagnostic kits from Kamachand, and we’re curing AIDS with stem cells and CCR5 gene manipulation.”

Young-Joon nodded.

“You’ve done a great job. We may be able to wipe out HIV with a little more work.”

“Doctor Ryu,” Jason said.

“Yes?”

“There’s something I’ve been hearing from GSC members lately while I was working on this.”

“Yes.”

“I heard that you agreed to help catch the Ebola virus in exchange for using the bonobos from Congo.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Young-Joon replied calmly.

“Hm.”

Jason stroked his chin.

“Doctor Ryu, when the Ebola virus broke out a few years ago, the World Health Organization funded several pharmaceutical companies and universities to fight it.”

“Really?”

“Several studies were done to develop a vaccine, but most of the international collaborations failed. Do you know why?”

“What is it?”

“Because there was no standard blood serum. As you know, to develop a vaccine, you need to inject an animal with the vaccine candidate and measure the amount of antibodies it develops, right?”

“Yes. if that vaccine candidate doesn’t cause the disease and it produces high levels of antibodies, you develop that candidate further.”

“That’s right. But we don’t have a standard for what is a high level of antibodies.”

Young-Joon tilted his head in confusion.

“Why? Even if the fatality rate of Ebola is high, there has to be someone who has survived, right? We just have to get their blood and make a standard blood serum. The amount of antibodies they have in their body can be the standard level.”

“RIght, but people in Middle Eastern countries don’t give blood.”

“...”

Young-Joon was dumbfounded, like someone had hit him in the head with a hammer.

“They don’t give blood?”

“It’s because of religious reasons. Even if they are sick, they sometimes refuse to take other people’s blood. Giving their own blood to foreigners when they don’t even take their own people’s blood? No one will do that.”

“...”

“And it’s very difficult to find someone who is open-minded and willing to give their blood among those few survivors who have naturally healed after contracting a highly fatal disease like Ebola.”

“I see. That’s a challenge I hadn’t thought of.”

“The National Institute of Health, the big pharma companies like Conson & Colson, Schumaatix, and famous university research centers like Harvard and Stanford, were going crazy because they couldn’t get that blood serum.”

“...”

“It was a mess. They were all reporting their data, and some teams got a ten-fold increase in antibodies whereas another team got a thousand-fold increase in their antibodies. But if you quantitatively compared them, the team that got a ten-fold increase actually had higher levels of antibodies. It was a mess because there was no reference value.”

It was the same thing as trying to measure the length of something without a metric like centimeters. It was a mess because they were measuring the length with the size of their hand when they all had different hand sizes. There was a reason why the world’s top pharmaceutical companies and universities, as well as the National Institute of Health, failed to develop a vaccine for Ebola.

“But then, we found four Korean people who had beat Ebola,” Jason said.

“Koreans?”

“Yes. Ebola was kind of going around in Korea as well. And since the headquarters for the International Vaccine Institute was in Korea, it was the easiest to get it here.”

“So, did you make a standard blood serum?”

“We got their blood, but we failed.”

“Why?”

“It was too difficult to purify the Ebola antibody from the blood serum. That’s where we failed. Then, we stopped further development because Ebola was dying down.”

“I see.”

“If you are going to study the eradication of Ebola, you will probably want to start here.”

Jason pulled our four documents with some personal information. Personal information like names or national identification numbers were concealed, and there was only information like age, sex, and weight.

“I will contact them if you would like,” Jason said.

“Please do,” Young-Joon said.

Translator’s thoughts

I always love it when a new episode starts!! We’re seeing some abnormalities in Rosaline, which could be problematic...?? We don’t know yet, but let’s hope everyone is alright! Personally, I wish Rosaline would leave Young-Joon’s body and take the form of Ryu Sae-Yi, his younger sister.