(Untitled)

[sir_samuel]

The Council room was discomfortingly crowded for Vimes' taste. Besides the members of the Council themselves, representatives of the Starks, and that damned Lannister woman, there was, oh so conspicuous in their inconspicuousness, the press.

A room full of people, and what were they here to talk about? Stabbings. Just bloody lovely

Comments

[abbysciuto]

"Sure," she agreed. She had sort of been expecting someone to ask, so she'd already considered a Gibbs-style explanation, which would involve an example or two and very few big words.

"New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is the human version of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow. It's a prion disease, which means that the infectious agent is a protein rather than a virus or a bacterium. Basically what happens is that a protein misfolds. Like, say you wanted to fold a paper airplane...but instead you folded a paper frog for some reason. Well, a paper frog is not going to fly as well as a paper airplane, and a misfolded protein doesn't function as well as a correctly folded protein. Eventually, once enough proteins misfold, the cells that contain those proteins start dying, because they can't function. And if you get enough dying cells, you end up with literal holes in the brain tissue."

"Holes in your brain are obviously not a good thing. Eventually, someone with nvCJD will die a fairly uncomfortable death, because there's just not enough brain tissue left to keep the person alive and functioning. Assuming of course that they don't first do something like try to kill someone else."

[sir_samuel]

"So could that be the reason he'd gone after Mr. Petrelli, and possibly other people? 'cause he had holes in his brain?" Vimes asked. From Peter's story, it sounded like there was more than that, and he supposed it didn't matter much either way now, but he wondered if it was possible that just a disease could make someone that crazy.

[abbysciuto]

"Dr. House would probably know more about the exact clinical progression of things than I would," she warned, gesturing to House. "But behavioral changes and psychiatric problems are one of the more common symptoms of nvCJD."