Medical mystery: Unknown disease takes the lives of two area teens and leaves third in critical condition

two teens die, one critical and still no answers

On February 19, 2013 Tyler Budro  (Craigan) of Daisetta in nearby Liberty County picked her son Tyler from school after the nurse called advising Tyler had a fever and thinking it could have been Mono.

The next day the fever continued to rise and Tyler’s family took him to  the doctor at which point he tested positive for Mono.

On Thursday, February 21st they took him to another clinic as he hadn’t improved. ‘

On Friday February 22, Tyler’s father came home in the afternoon to find him on the floor in seizures. He immediately put him in his vehicle and started for Baptist Hospital in Beaumont again. Halfway there he was met by an ambulance as the seizures hadn’t stopped. That was the last time Tyler was conscious.

Once there he was admitted and then sent to Hermann Hospital in Houston.

Doctors were baffled by his condition \mono is not known to attack the brain as in Tyler’s case. . He once again tested positive for Mono but the symptoms were not that of Mono as . The seizures did slow after heavy medication. The swelling of the brain did not slow. Doctors had to remove more of the skull than they would a trauma patient to ease the pressure of the swelling brain.

Tyler was a football player and sportsman. In November on a hunting trip he shot a pig and then found a small one and brought it home, making a pen for it. Doctors even looked at that as a source but still nothing. Cat Scratch Fever and negative results.

Tyler passed away March 10th on the sixteenth day.

Every day since then Tyler’s mother Janie has called the Harris County Medical Examiners Office for autopsy results and is told some of the tests could take months and nothing is back yet. She said she needed closure to know what caused her sons death.

On April 11th, a beautiful healthy 17 year old girl came down with symptoms of the flu. She had fever, body aches, malaise and it stood to reason that Katie had the flu as there was a known diagnosis of the flu in the immediate family just a few days earlier. She seemed to be improving by the 2nd day and was out and about being a normal teenage girl but that 3rd day she woke up again with the same symptoms. She took her daughter to the doctor where she was diagnosed with the flu/strep and was told she was a bit dehydrated and might want to consider going to the ER for IV fluids if she didn’t feel Katie would be able to keep herself hydrated enough while fighting strep/flu. Her mom took one look at her and said might is not an option. Every mother knows when their child isn’t their usual self and she took her straight to the ER. What happened in the next few hours is every parents worse nightmare. 
In the ER, her fever had finally gone down after receiving fluids and her vital signs were holding steady but a few of her lab values were off so they admitted her for observation and to rehydrate her. She was not on the pediatric floor for very long before she began to have new onset seizures without fever. She was quickly transferred to Texas Children’s Hospital. On arrival to TCH, she began to seize uncontrollably and was put on a ventilator. Her seizures became longer and more extensive and after exhausting all efforts to control the seizures, the doctors had no choice but to medically induce a coma. Testing revealed swelling in her brain and pneumonia. The doctors are left no stone unturned because they wanted  to know more than ever how this perfectly healthy girl went from having the flu to being on life support in a matter of days. They ran every test possible but still no answers. She was on so many medications to keep her stable that her organs  started to fail in the process.

Tyler’s mother had Tyler’s doctors send his medical file to Katie’s  doctors in an effort to possibly find something. They didn’t.

Katie died April 29, sixteen days after her first doctor visit.

A little over a month ago B.J Crawford, a New Caney High School student  began feeling sick. For almost a week it persisted, vomiting and diarrhea and fever. He finally told his father about it and was taken to the doctor.

Then on the same day Katie got sick   B.J. Crawford  was taken from class by MCHD after his fever spiked and his blood pressure dropped. He was transported to Kingwood Hospital and within hours was transferred to Texas Children’s. His symptom’s closely resemble the other cases except for the fact he has not had any seizures. He was friends with Katie Rios.

He has not been placed into a medically induced coma but doctors are wanting to biopsy his lungs. However he is to medically fragile for this procedure. They do know there is a major infection in his lungs. He is very week and on dialysis.

Yesterday his mother Kim Cutler tried to communicate with him but as much as he tried he was unable to speak. Only mumbling which then affected his breathing.  He pointed to his cell phone and after his mother handed it to him he attempted to text her a message but his fingers were too weak. He then took a picture pad and pointed to a heart as a tear rolled out of his eye. When Kim asked if he was trying to tell her he loved her, he nodded yes.

Today his lungs  have totally given out and he is now on life support. Several  different types of doctors from all over are meeting to discuss the possibility of doing a bone marrow test…the risk with the low platelets vs. the benefits of maybe an answer. They are looking for HLH a blood disease type of leukemia and starting him on chemo…but due to weakness that has been ruled out. His blood count is currently at 34 which on a normal person is 250.

 http://main.montgomerycountypolicereporter.com/?p=66546&cpage=1

Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.

One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, "What good are you?"

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, "We're no better than bacteria!"

Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.

Saving the Earth with Ebola

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.

AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, "We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that."

With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.

After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.

"And the fossil fuels are running out," he said, "so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people." So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population.

How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears on his web site.

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.

Questions for Dr. Doom

Then came the question and answer session, in which Professor Pianka stated that other diseases are also efficient killers.

The audience laughed when he said, "You know, the bird flu's good, too." They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth."

After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, "What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?"

Pianka replied, "I speak to the converted!"

Pianka responded to more questions by condemning politicians in general and Al Gore by name, because they do not address the population problem and "...because they deceive the public in every way they can to stay in power."

He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." ...

With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It was necessary to wait a while before I could get close enough to take some photographs (Fig. 1).

I was assigned to judge a paper in a grad student competition after the speech. On the way, three professors dismissed Pianka as a crank. While waiting to enter the competition room, a group of a dozen Lamar University students expressed outrage over the Pianka speech.

Yet five hours later, the distinguished leaders of the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. When the banquet hall filled with more than 400 people responded with enthusiastic applause, I walked out in protest.

Corresponding with Dr. Doom

Recently I exchanged a number of e-mails with Pianka. I pointed out to him that one might infer his death wish was really aimed at Africans, for Ebola is found only in Central Africa. He replied that Ebola does not discriminate, kills everyone and could spread to Europe and the the Americas by a single infected airplane passenger.

In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and found verification of my interpretation of his remarks on his own web site. In a student evaluation of a 2004 course he taught, one of Professor Pianka's students wrote, "Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness." (Go here and scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation section near the end.)

Yet the majority of his student reviews were favorable, with one even saying, " I worship Dr. Pianka."

The 45-minute lecture before the Texas Academy of Science converted a university biology senior into a Pianka disciple, who then published a blog that seriously supports Pianka's mass death wish.

Dangerous Times
Let me now remove my reporter's hat for a moment and tell you what I think. We live in dangerous times. The national security of many countries is at risk. Science has become tainted by highly publicized cases of misconduct and fraud.

Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria? I believe that airborne Ebola is unlikely to threaten the world outside of Central Africa. But scientists have regenerated the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people. There is concern that small pox might someday return. And what other terrible plagues are waiting out there in the natural world to cross the species barrier and to which scientists will one day have access?

Meanwhile, I still can't get out of my mind the pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred scientists of the Texas Academy of Science gave a standing ovation for a speaker who they heard advocate for the slow and torturous death of over five billion human beings. ...

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/doctor_doom_eric_pianka_receiv002118.html

Scientists call for action to tackle CO2 levels

The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago

Scientists are calling on world leaders to take action on climate change after carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere broke through a symbolic threshold.

Daily CO2 readings at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time.

Sir Brian Hoskins, the head of climate change at the UK-based Royal Society, said the figure should "jolt governments into action".

China and the US have made a commitment to co-operate on clean technology.

But BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said the EU was backing off the issue, and cheap fossil fuels looked attractive to industries.

The laboratory, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the by gas stretching back to 1958.

Carbon dioxide is regarded as the most important of the manmade greenhouse gases blamed for raising the temperature on the planet over recent decades.

Human sources come principally from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

Ministers in the UK have claimed global leadership in reducing CO2 emissions and urged other nations to follow suit.

Sir Brian Hoskins said a greater sense of urgency was needed

But the official Climate Change Committee (CCC) last month said that Britain's total contribution towards heating the climate had increased, because the UK is importing goods that produce CO2 in other countries.

The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago - before modern humans existed.

Scientists say the climate back then was also considerably warmer than it is today.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said a greater sense of urgency about tackling climate change was needed.

"Before we started influencing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, over the last million years it went between about 180 and 280 parts per million," he said.

"Now, since the Industrial Revolution and more in the last 50 years, we've taken that level up by more than 40% to a level of 400 and that hasn't been seen on this planet for probably four million years.

"But around the world, there are things happening, it's not all doom and gloom," he added.

"China is doing a lot. Its latest five year plan makes really great strides."

China's plan for 2011-2015 includes reversing the damage done by 30 years of growth and increasing the use of renewable energy.