Is Rabies Just a Battle for Time?

Murphy, Monica, and Bill Wasik. “Undead: The Rabies Virus Remains a Medical Mystery.” Wired Science. Conde Nast, July 2012. Web. 25 September 2012.

In "Undead: The Rabies Virus Remains a Medical Mystery", Murphy and Wasik discuss this coma treatment that was performed by Dr. Rodney Willoughby to save a young girl affected by rabies. Willoughby began this treatment when he reasoned, “the battle against rabies might actually be a battle for time. Rabies might not be killing the brain directly, but it was causing the brain to kill the body before the body had time to fight it off”. The only information Willoughby knew about rabies was that it was known to be 100 percent fatal, but he disagreed with this. Therefore after selling this theory to others, Willoughby began the coma treatment. He uses technology to leave the young girl in a coma for a week and see if her body is able to fight off the rabies. The coma treatment worked on this young girl but it left Willoughby and rabies experts with many unanswered questions. Even Willoughby questions his own theory, is rabies just a battle for time?

Since rabies has always been known to be 100 percent fatal this leads society to wonder, was Willoughby’s coma treatment the key to survival from rabies or do all rabies cases differ? If all of the people that have either been affected by rabies or have had family or friends that have been affected by rabies stuck together and encouraged this research there could possibly become a cure for this life threatening outbreak. This could also result in answers to all of these unanswered questions that have resulted from the very few cases of people who did survive rabies. Each case differed in some way, so therefore what actually distinguishes how severe rabies is? There are much more people that have not survived rabies in comparison to those that have survived. If society encouraged the extensive research of Willoughby’s theory and found out if rabies is just a battle for time then we would have more time to save the lives that are being affected by rabies.