The Organism That Attacks Both People And Fish | Diagnosis Unknown 12 | Real Responders

a mysterious organism drives the wires on North Carolina's victims find their skin burning then they begin to fear they are losing their minds even the scientists studying the organism succumb health officials rush to close rivers and beaches they must track down the mysterious source of this dangerous sickness before it's too late [Music] [Music] the Carolina coastline a watery wilderness teeming with life [Music] fishermen Seth Willis and David Jones had worked north carolina's news in Pamlico rivers all their lives but not too long ago they began to notice something strange being better days at certain times of the year when they were on the water David Jones felt nauseous and lightheaded it always passed and mostly they didn't worry about it one day in 1995 though it didn't pass in fact it got worse did not be doing when the men turned to head home they ran into a problem neither one could remember which wave was home it was a clear day and they knew the Neuse River like the backs of their hands but on this day nothing looked familiar they were disoriented confused if I they motored in circles for hours trying to fix on a familiar landmark as David Jones recalls out of the clear blue you don't recognize the landmark you don't recognize where you're at it's a weird feeling I was lost within myself after hours of riding around aimlessly they finally came upon their boat ramp but their thoughts and actions just got more and more jumbled we were trying to put the boat on the trailer very very simple operation just like putting your pants on when you get up [Music] the only problem is can't focus to get it on the trailer almost three and a half hours when he got home David Jones described the incident to his wife we got lost Margaret Jones had been seeing a lot of changes in her husband I got real scared and I worried and I would ask him don't you think you need to see a doctor I'm not gonna see a doctor he's doing my money away the more he stayed out in the water the worse he got as David and his partner Seth Willis compared symptoms they found they both had begun to develop lesions sores on their arms that didn't heal properly the lesion started appearing at the top of the glove were it touched the skin this one seven months finally healed the lesions began not healing but more appearing there's a little something going on but you can't quite put your finger on it the men noticed the lesions flared up whenever they were working on the water not only that the fish they were handling also had lesions [Music] finally david symptoms got so bad he decided to make the trip to the doctor could you tell me what happened precisely when he could not even get out what his thoughts were I don't know if he was having a nervous breakdown I just didn't know because he just was not acting irrational and he kept saying you know I feel like my skin's crawling he said I feel like there's something that's crawling around in my skin and I never I mean I couldn't understand so well maybe you know you've got an allergy or you're itching or something you know because sometimes you feel like your skin is itchy he said no it feels like something is in my skin crawling around the doctor couldn't find any medical explanation for David's symptoms he suggested that he contact a scientist in Raleigh who was conducting a study on fisherman with similar mental and physical problems her name was Joanne Burkholder as the director of the Center for Applied aquatic ecology at North Carolina State University Joanne Burkholder is a marine ecologist who had been hearing about a mysterious illness that was plaguing fishermen like David Jones I was on the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission and so I interacted with a lot of fishermen in our state especially coastal folk and I began to just quietly ask them have you ever had any problems so you've been out on the water do you ever get sick ever any funny things happen the doctor traveled to New Bern and met with David and Margaret Jones matter of fact by the time that I met David Jones he had burning eyes burning skin couldn't breathe he wasn't talking very well he had serious bouts of memory problems she knew Jones needed help Burkholder suggested he see a doctor at the Duke University Medical Center's neurological disorders clinic dr. Donald schmeckel specializes in hard to treat neurological cases his presenting symptoms basically make you think of the nervous system he was having difficulty reading he was having some difficulties in emotions and thinking he also had some indication of widespread body type of changes is whatever functions jumped a bit he had a skin rash so the sky's the limit there do you have a systemic medical illness that's affecting the nervous system indirectly or is the nervous system the issue when you have a skin rash you have to argue that but not only the nervous system but the rest of his body was also being affected by the by the exposures the first step was for David Jones to have a cat scan the results were not good the scans showed David had suffered serious neurological damage he had an injury deep within the left temporal lobe of his brain the area linked to memory and language but the doctor had no idea what was causing it he was telling me my body was degenerating daily and there was nothing they could do to stop it whatever was attacking David Jones's body wasn't only affecting fisherman Joanne Burkholder had gotten sick herself in the course of working with fish from these North Carolina rivers she had come down with symptoms just like Jones's there were problems that crept up on us but I did write them off sore throat must just be a virus or headaches must be stress shortness of breath asthma-like symptoms must be allergy and it wasn't the first time a couple of years earlier Burkholder had been studying similar water samples with diseased fish when she had a strange reaction I had been putting my hands into aquaria to get the currents of water to put into different containers for this experiment and I would hold the beaker close to my face she began to feel fed and disoriented she needed to get out of the lab I doubled over I had severe stomach cramping and realized I wasn't breathing very well I had asthma like attack outside the fresh air seemed to relieve the symptoms but Burkholder wasn't going back into that lab she went home instead and I don't remember much else for about eight days except that I would have periods in which I could I could realize something was really wrong it was really a very frightening experience she called in sick with the flu but her symptoms suggested something quite different for a week her memory seemed to fade in and out of focus I realized that I couldn't hold a conversation so I here I stayed in my apartment for about eight days and as I began to come out of it I tested myself by watching a news cast and then seeing if I could write down a simple sentence that someone accepted after more than a week at home Burkholder felt well enough to get back to work in the lab now she was determined to try to find out what made her so sick she had been studying a class of single-celled organisms called dinoflagellates or dinos they are primitive so called that is they have been on earth for a long long time they're considered among the oldest of the types of organisms with nuclei in their cells so they've probably been around for literally 500 or 800 million years however they're not really very primitive in some respects they have had a lot of time to evolve complex chemical interactions with other animals on the day she became so well she had just started working with one specific organism a tiny predator known as fusteria as this one celled killer morphs through as many as 24 life stages it becomes more and more deadly in fact it had recently been linked to massive fish gills along the Carolina waterways exactly why no one knew but fusteria seemed to thrive where the rivers meet the sea in coastal estuaries were salt and freshwater mix the signs of its presence in the tidal basins of the Neuse and Pamlico rivers were alarming hysteria is a generalist it eats just about everything and anything it eats dead material live material but it's favorite source of food is fish like a microscopic Jekyll and Hyde most of the time kissteria was a benign little organism lying dormant in the silt at the bottom of estuaries but in the presence of fish something would trigger it to grow many times its size sprouting tentacles and potentially releasing a venomous toxin that paralyzes its prey the fist eeriest toxin was so powerful it could literally peel the flesh from the fish's bodies in short vist area was transformed into the perfect killing machine scientists feared that this newly discovered organism might also be attacking humans they had to find out and soon in the coastal waters of North Carolina a strange organism was possibly attacking fish killing them and eating away their flesh within minutes humans who work the waterways were also developing large skin lesions loss of motor skills and memory problems it was an illness that was plaguing many fishermen like David Jones I'm sick I'm not feeling well and I can't get the most important question answered what is happening no one can answer this question at the North Carolina Center for Applied aquatic ecology dr. Joanne burkholder's research team searched for answers it seemed to her that vist area might be more dangerous than anyone knew it might be targeting humans Waterman were the most common victims but Burkholder staff was also suffering howard glasgow is a marine ecologist who had worked closely with joann Burkholder on fusteria for years he also experienced some strange symptoms while researching the organism I just you know got this really euphoric feeling and stood up and was like my mind was rushing a thousand miles an hour but my body was moving like moonwalking I'm really slow and it's kind of this out-of-body experience if you will I head on my way home I was at that time living about a half an hour away it took me about three hours to get home evidently I was wandering aimlessly around [Music] hey everyone with a dozen lab workers sick the university had no choice they closed the lab until it could be made safe stopping all work with fists area for over a year all of our cultures were destroyed because they just couldn't survive a year and a half of dormancy so we couldn't get a back up and functioning we basically had to start off in June 1995 a biohazard level 3 laboratory was opened it was divided into two sides a vented contained so-called hot side for working with toxic agents and a separate cold side for everyday offices once Burkholder was satisfied that the design of the new facility would greatly minimize the risks of exposure to lethal organisms the research into fist area resumed samples will be grown airborne fusteria was never known to affect humans and Burkholder set out to answer two key questions exactly how did it affect humans and what could be done to stop it she called on the national ocean service in Charleston South Carolina for help [Music] John Ramsdale and Peter Moeller are two of the leading experts on marine toxicology in the world Burkholder sent the lab a sample of hysteria and the men went to work trying to isolate what made it so dangerous [Music] Peter Moeller knew what he was being asked to do was nearly impossible it's like looking for a needle in the haystack but we don't know what the needle looks like we have to start partitioning this haystack throwing out all the stuff we recognize as hay and testing everything else and then we have to slowly build up what we determined to be the active constituent we don't know what it looks like the scientists first challenge was trying to identify and isolate the toxin from the fist area itself toxin samples were dissolved in a solvent and then isolated using a controlled evaporation process once they isolated it they next sought to learn how it worked in the lab they studied how specialized cells reacted to the presence of the toxin John what I found I did a big scam if I charge and just received where is the activity its friction six seven we probe that inside the cells to look at a type of biochemical mechanisms that are occurring and it's from this information that physicians can better understand how this toxin causes the adverse effects say on memory processing say on formation of lesions on the skin what they found was a dangerous substance that acted in frightening ways Ramsdale and molar used their research to gain insight into the possibility of the fist area toxin adversely affecting immune system and brain functions [Music] now that they were beginning to understand what the fusteria toxin did these researchers wanted to see just how aggressive it was what different kinds of cells would it attack in researching fish kills they tested how it responded to different types of blood it didn't seem interested in frozen chicken blood but when they gave it human blood what they found was startling it is incredibly aggressive and loves to attack and indeed after providing it with human blood we saw that it aggressively ate the human blood just as aggressively as it did the fish blood [Music] the fist area moved from cell-to-cell like vampires breaking down and devouring the blood cells they were ravenous and their favorite food seemed to come from humans scientists were in a race to find something to stop them [Music] in 1995 North Carolina researchers were working to find the source of a mysterious illness they had been examining an aggressive microorganism and a potentially dangerous toxin that was linked to the slaughtering of fish populations [Music] now they feared this organism was also targeting humans at a North Carolina aquatics lab a new facility had just been built to safely contain dangerous organisms the fist Iria toxin was confined in a biohazard level three containment area marine ecologist Howard glass goes work area was in the safe zone yet he was still showing mysterious symptoms I went to have conversations with people and walking out of the room and coming back in and not having even remembered having a conversation or being there and argue with them about not having been there and tell them that they were crazy when actually it was me that was actually having the problem the lab technicians feared that somehow the toxin might have become airborne and was leaking out of the containment area into the offices if that was the case they needed to find the source of the problem fast they feared something might be wrong with the ventilation system and conducted a smoke test smoke was introduced into the vent system to see how the air from the work area was being processed all the smoke should have been vented to the outside [Music] but when they went to check Glasgow's office their worst fears were confirmed an improperly installed ventilation system was sending air from the toxic hot room directly to the vent above Glasgow's desk so naturally he sustained a lot of exposure and thought he'd been working in perfectly fed condition Howard's case led to theories from the researchers that fusteria did not just strike through the water its toxin could possibly cause illness even when airborne that was something fisherman David Jones already knew no longer working on the water he's still grappled with his mysterious symptoms I can be less than eight hundred yards from the water and my skin will sometimes itch my eyes start watering a headache comes on you know something is present because it is affecting your senses burkholder's team turned their attention to the Neuse River where David Jones and other fishermen were getting sick they now thought that if the fist' area was concentrated in the water it could easily become airborne and endanger people across the state as the wind picks up that can cause the the water molecules to get into the air and the water molecules would have attached to them potentially Pfiesteria toxin back at the lab water samples were prepared for examination the water was in fact teeming with fists area if the posterior toxin became airborne researchers feared it could infect thousands of people living working and playing along the waterways of North Carolina the implications were chilling and that was just the start in fact the researchers thought they were facing a much larger problem since wisteria was not just confined to North Carolina 200 miles north in the Chesapeake Bay the Waterman of Maryland were witnessing something terrible the water was covered with fish thousands of dead fish with sores and ugly lesions and tails that had been eaten away and the Maryland watermen were also getting sick dave morally had been fishing the chesapeake region for years in the last year he'd begun developing chronic memory lapses along with red festering sores on his arms [Music] his strange symptoms sent him to the office of his family physician Hey good afternoon dr. Richie shoemaker of Pocomoke Maryland noticed a lot of Waterman coming into his office with lesions covering their arms and legs you've been sick for they were also complaining that they were losing their minds memory loss these illnesses don't follow the pattern of anything that we have seen before pretty early on it was clear that as a family practitioner I didn't have background in any of the many different sciences that were coming to bear and I didn't know what was going on so my fear was that I would not be able to help Schumaker became very concerned he began doing his own research and found that North Carolina was experiencing the same problems with fish and Waterman linked to an organism called fusteria one name kept popping up Joanne Burkholder my name is Ritchie maker on a fanny practice physician Pocomoke Maryland contacting Burkholder he found striking similarities between his patients and the fisherman she had documented they're not like anything that I've seen before a sample of water from Maryland was sent down to the North Carolina aquatics lab technicians there identified fusteria microbes present in the water from the Chesapeake Bay the results confirm dr. shoemakers worst fears the dangerous toxin was also infesting Maryland's waters in 1995 a newly discovered microbe had surfaced along the coast of North Carolina it had been linked to the killing of millions of fish and was now thought to be preying on the men who worked the waters in Maryland hundreds of miles away the same organism had been detected but the discovery had not yet been made public little did anyone know that one influential fisherman on a weekend excursion would break the story wide open thank you guys catch anything today Maryland governor Parris Glendening was out fishing with his son they caught a rockfish just north of the Chesapeake Bay bridge-tunnel but their excitement soon turned to horror as they discovered it was covered with lesions hey I got to tell you that they were gross I mean it was almost like a a either acid or a worm or something at board some cases all the way through the fish the health of the fish was not good at all and it was clear we have serious problems and the problem just kept getting bigger weeks later 10,000 fish were found floating dead at the mouth of the Pokemon gorilla dr. Richie shoemakers small practice was becoming overwhelmed with patience all of them had eerily similar complaints skin lesions confusion memory loss headaches fatigue burning eyes and throats history was the first illness that we found to be acquired from environmental exposure to a compound made by a living creature biologically produced neurotoxin these illnesses don't follow the pattern of anything that we have seen before in Maryland like North Carolina fishermen weren't the only ones affected if Vaughn Lawson was a researcher who was documenting the fish kills we're gonna do I test a visual contrast after working with the fish for several months she began suffering memory loss respiratory problems I had no concentration whatsoever I couldn't read good and carry on a conversation right if I don't write it down it won't get done that's why I write notes and why I live with pocketful notes take another look in shoemakers small practice he identified 60 patients with what he believed was severe exposure to fist area officials now knew they were dealing with a full-blown epidemic eager to document the effects of hysteria they decided to push the case up to the state level a panel of doctors headed by dr. Glenn Morris from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins traveled to Pocomoke to examine firsthand a group of patients identified by the public health department including the patients of dr. shoemaker piled into a Health Department beat up Health Department ban to go down to the Pocomoke River and on the way down I delivered a short lecture on hysterical reactions and you know talked about the fact that that our goal was to try to provide reassurance from a public health standpoint that there wasn't anything going on as it turned out it didn't exactly work out that way what the physician saw startled them these patients could not be classified as having hysterical reactions in fact all thirteen patients they examined had skin lesions some memory loss and learning difficulties associated with exposure to fist Erie infested water come right this way mr. more in the room in exam room 3 this afternoon okay ready dr. Lim Gratton a neuropsychologist from the University of Maryland was asked to measure cognitive functions of the patients and mr. Morley with us today the Waterman that we had a chance to meet with were frightened they were anxious they were worrying about how this was going to impact their ability to work to make a living whether or not it was reversible whether or not they'd get better she initially thought it would take about 15 minutes per patient for the evaluations I did not expect to find significant or dramatic health problems when we went out there it just seemed incomprehensible to me that uh that there could be a toxin suddenly appearing in estuary waterways that that could suddenly start making people ill in the end the impairments they were displaying were so profound she spent nearly two hours with each patient I was in the state of considerable disbelief to have something so clear and striking and consistent amongst an entire group of people was pretty remarkable the people who had been exposed to the waterways to a significant degree we're suffering from significant problems in a new learning and memory after ten days of testing the panel met to discuss their initial findings you got 13 people and just about everybody has some kind of problem interested and their stories were quite amazing confusion and memory problems I'm really curious what the panel compared the Pocomoke cases to a sampling of average watermen dr. grant who documented the waterman symptoms her research showed that people exposed to affected waters had a whole range of cognitive difficulties Harriman was in this compartment of memory the element of memory that is involved in new learning they were able to learn material at a much slower rate than age and education compared normals they're not exposed individuals the deficit was pretty significant and this probably explains why they're complaining of confusion the this was not at a hysterical reaction this was something very real and there was something very real and very strange that was going on in the brains of these individuals these are the these are the PET scans the medical team prepared their report for the Maryland State Health Department they didn't mince words as you can see here either some hypermetabolic activity out onto the bright yellow in this group compared to the control room now they finally had strong indicators that exposure to the river caused problems with learning and memory what they didn't know was how they could combat it what we have here is is still a mystery we don't know what's going on with these people but the data that we have said that there's something real that's happening one of the things I'm not comfortable with is I'm not all they knew was that the problems originated on the waterways like we're gonna have people out there on that River and are we comfortable with people having continued exposure to the river based on what we're saying with these findings we need to get the State Health Department into this and and pretend go to the governor you know the governor is ready to close the river if you give him the redline tell him to that's one of those circumstances from the public health standpoint we got to shut down the river the governor had only one choice and he acted swiftly for the first time in Maryland history he ordered the Pocomoke River closed no one knew exactly when it would open again or if they would ever be able to help the people who were falling ill [Music] after a deadly microbe invaded Maryland waterways and people began getting sick in 1997 the governor moved quickly to close the Pocomoke River he wasn't taking any chances it moved it from being a local fish kill problem to any problem that potentially threatened human life human health [Music] at the national institute of environment health sciences in North Carolina leading scientists also gathered to compare research on the toxin lots of state officials from Maryland convened there along with fishermen and some of the local physicians and certain scientists who were invited up to try to shed light on the issue and all of us got together and presented data or ideas and hashed hash to over what we thought might be going on that was causing the fish disease the key question for scientists what had happened to trigger the illnesses normally fusteria occur naturally in waterways and aren't a problem but something had allowed the microbes to grow rapidly and out of control [Music] the scientists said the summit theorized that the increased posterior levels were a direct result of increased nutrients in the water much of it potentially caused by animal waste products washing into the rivers and upsetting the natural balance [Music] the waste runoff in North Carolina rivers was so extreme that it could be seen from space the amount of manure produced by swine in North Carolina is the equivalent it's considered of all the sewage from the people of California and New York and combination North Carolina officials decided to close the infected Neuse River meanwhile the Maryland State Legislature took the strongest action of any state passing the Clean Water Act of 1998 in direct response to the vist area infestation of the Chesapeake waterways miners used to take Canaries into the mine and if there was bad gas there the canary would die and the miners give give them time to escape that mined before the gas killed everyone I think the fist area is like the Canaries of years pass it is a clear signal that we have exceeded pollution levels beyond what is reasonable beyond what nature can tolerate in our water and it is an implication to us that we've got to do something about this [Music] while lawmakers grappled with how best to handle the situation doctors like Richie shoemaker were still dealing with dozens of patients who were suffering [Music] what you mean as he began seeing more and more patients dr. shoemaker played a hunch he decided to try cholestyramine a powerful anti cholesterol drug that works by attaching itself to harmful cholesterol and carrying it out of the patient's system co-star Amin has been used for many toxicological in the past it's one of the few things that binds dioxins it binds chlorothalonil it binds DDT for goodness sake PCBs it binds toxins how long has been going on dr. shoemakers guess was right the drug proved so successful that the first three fusteria patients who received it were symptom free in three days shoemaker found that the drug had to be administered shortly after the fist eerie exposure began to be effective it worked best for limited exposures [Music] three months after she first saw her original 13 patients neuropsychologist dr. Lin Gratton conducted a follow-up exam to check their cognitive function okay can you tell me as many words as you can from that exit yeah 11 had recovered to near normal levels to who possibly had the highest degree of Pfiesteria exposure remain severely impaired today the fist area outbreak has emerged as a highly public health issue as this vicious microbe intensifies its assault at the national ocean service lab in Charleston South Carolina dr. John Ramsdale continues his work to find a way to control the fist area his team is trying to create a marker so that health officials can identify fusteria toxin in the water in the lab the eerie green glow of a fusteria sample means success doctor Ramsdale and dr. Mohler have combined a gene from a firefly and that of a human to create a marker gene that glows green in the presence of hysteria toxin when these cells respond to the toxin they turn on the Firefly luciferase gene making all the enzyme that gives them the capacity to make light so hence these cells become almost like little flashlights in response to the toxin instead of going through a biochemical changed at least to cell toxicity they go through a biochemical change that generates light but for researcher Howard Glasgow at the North Carolina aquatics lab all of the research may come too late his condition continues to deteriorate he has developed shakes a numbing in his arms and legs and a progressive degeneration of his spinal cord if uncorrected and we're unable to control this then eventually it will get to the point where I'll be completely paralyzed because of the area in which my demyelinating or nerve degeneration problem is occurring on my spinal cord certainly I have a personal investment associated with understanding the motive action of the Pfiesteria toxin we need to know more about how it affects the brain how it can be useful in understanding Alzheimer's like the symptoms from neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis all of which you know in combination with one another have have presented in my situation and others that have been exposed to Pfiesteria this is about a an Alexandrian toxin that i'm checking in to thank dr. joanne Burkholder herself has also suffered significant exposure to fusteria she still battles with chronic bronchitis yet she continues her work with the toxin the only reason that I stayed working on Pfiesteria was because of Howard's health only reason that I stayed after the 1997 outbreaks in Maryland state and North Carolina was to see through to the end getting this toxin characterized to see if there was anything that could be done to help our [Music] scientists have yet to develop a test to detect the fusteria toxin in human blood for now medical scientists are calling the health effect estuary associated syndrome to open your mouth a little bit for me about like that good the testing continues while there is still debate on whether fusteria is truly the cause of these symptoms the signs and symptoms are so nonspecific that they may be mimicked by other very common illnesses we will not know the answer until effective tests for the talks of are developed and I think the prudent thing to do in the meantime is don't need fish with lesions and don't be around fish gills for physicians like Richie shoemaker the obvious symptoms can't be overlooked take any one person's word for a claim it has to has to stand up [Music] other people need to see it and skepticism is right but skepticism in the face of obvious abnormalities is inappropriate look at the condition of them the coloration they're supposed to be white and clean and they are brown and full toxins those who suffer symptoms from possible for Styria exposure like fishermen Seth Willis and David Jones don't need experts to tell them the effects of hysteria are real as David Jones's health is degenerated he can no longer work on the water the toxin has taken away the only life he has ever known I've spent a lifetime to build a business and it was taken away from me you feel like you are a burden on someone else and it's not a very pleasant feeling as scientists grapple with understanding this mysterious organism David Jones only longs for the day when he has a clear mind and clear water in which to fish [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 1,581,194

Keywords: fisherman, hospital documentary, full documentary, true crime, medical mysteries

Id: 6uJWCUAdiHE

Length: 49min 38sec (2978 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020

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[u/GroundbreakingNet438]

This is morgellons!!!!!!