Re: Oliver/Maura
"Or none of them," Maura pointed out, wishing it were that simple. What was it with people? Was it really that hard to see things in a spectrum of possibility? Either research was bad or research would solve everything. Despite what Detective Marks had said a week ago, that wasn't what Maura believed. An understanding of the limitations of research was just as necessary as the research itself.
"Not everyone carries all antibodies. Most are developed as a person is exposed to the antigens. That's why the Native people of American continents were nearly wiped out in some regions by diseases the Europeans brought with them. They had never been exposed. Their bodies did not carry the antibodies necessary to fight the infections. It's why historically only those who had previously contracted and survived such things as chicken pox and scarlet fever were allowed to treat newly infected patients. Their previous exposure meant their bodies already carried the antibodies necessary to fight it and there was a very low risk of secondary infection.
"Further to that, the sample size is too small to properly research any such cure. There are thirty-three people here, including the children. The Alzheimer's Association estimates there are 5.4 million people with the disease in the United States. Of those 5.2 million are over the age of sixty-five. One in eight people over the age of sixty-five has the disease. We have one person who falls into that demographic. Of those under the age of sixty-five, two hundred thousand people live with the disease out of the more than three hundred million people living in this country according to 2012 estimates by the Census Bureau. That's one in fifteen hundred people. The National Cancer Society's calculations suggest 541.8 incidences of cancer of any site per 100,000 men, and 412.3 incidences per 100,000 women, or roughly 0.005 percent of men and 0.004 percent of women. We currently have nine women and twenty-four men.
"Those are the highest And all of that is based on the assumption that the isotype and it's associated antibodies would not just themselves be rejected by a normal human body as a foreign particles. Research on that level is impossible to complete accurately or responsibly with so few subjects. At most we can hope to learn enough to apply to our own medical concerns."