“Ready to order?” asked the waiter.
Mike took another sip of his beer and pointed to Ken.
“I’ll get the burger with cheddar, medium, and house fries,” said Ken.
“Sir?” the waiter turned to Mike.
“Fish and chips, the onion soup, and the Greek salad,” said Mike. “Lots of bread with the salad, please.”
The waiter retreated, still writing on his pad.
“Hungry?” asked Ken.
“You have no idea,” said Mike. “So these whales and dolphins. There are a bunch of oral histories among indigenous North Americans talking about the same thing with people.”
“Really?” asked Ken. “Mass suicides? Like the Heaven’s Gate cult, or Jim Jones, or something?”
“Yeah,” said Mike, “mass suicide. And the reason they did it was because they knew that their genes were polluted. If the whole tribe had the same mutation, they’d figure it out. They knew that if any of them lived to breed, they would pass it around until the whole race would be doomed.”
“How could they know that?” asked Ken.
“It was like a highly specialized instinct. People who believe in it think that we don’t have a need for this instinct anymore because the population of man is thriving, but if you look at some of the marine mammals, they’re right on the hairy edge of survival all the time. If there was a mutation that shortened the lifespan, or caused the offspring to fail to thrive, they’d be sunk, so to speak. So when a group evolves with a trait like that, it carries with it this trigger. Get enough individuals together who all have the same trigger, and they get this uncontrollable urge to commit group suicide,” explained Mike.
“I think I get it,” said Ken, “but it seems a little far fetched.”
“Is it really though?” asked Mike, sipping his beer. “Think about the complexity of other mechanisms that have evolved. There are some really intricate feedback loops and dependencies there. If we didn’t have any medicine and our population was really small, you’d need ways to ensure that truly worthy individuals breed. Something above simple survival of the fittest.”
“Wouldn’t that just be handled case-by-case?” suggested Ken. “Some guy is sickly, so no woman will mate with him?”
“True enough, but there are different kinds of mutations. You’ve got lethal mutations, loss-of-function, gain-of-function, dominant negative. Like your Marfan we were talking about before. What if there’s a type of mutation that goes unnoticed, or even becomes an attractor? You’ve heard of epigenetics?”
“Sounds familiar,” said Ken. “Remind me.”
“Epigenetics is when an environmental change influences the way a gene is expressed,” said Mike.
Ken raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll give you an example: you could be perfectly healthy, but you carry a gene for diabetes. You have one kid, and everything is fine. But then you go through a period of famine before you father your second kid. Your kids could have nearly identical DNA, but the famine flipped on the gene for the diabetes, so your second kid has it and your first never has a problem.”
“Could that happen?” asked Ken.
“Some studies link environmental effects to life expectancy of grandchildren,” said Mike.
“Grandchildren? That’s unreal,” said Ken.
“I know, right?" Mike sat back and finished his beer.
“So why does that remind you of my case?” Ken waved back towards his office building.
“Oh, yeah,” said Mike, reinvigorated. “That’s the most interesting part,” he hunched his shoulders and dove back into his narrative. “Along with these group suicides, you also get the rogues.” He twirled his fingers in the air. “A rogue mutation produces an individual who survives the mass suicide.”
“To what purpose? Isn’t that individual also infected?”
“Yes, but he never breeds. He prunes the dead branches of the genetic tree,” said Mike.
“Say what?” said Ken, surprised.
“This creature is born just to weed out the weak. A killer who’s skimming shallow end of the gene pool. Once every thousand generations a killer is born, and he’s somehow uniquely able to seek and destroy all the sick and weak members of his species. Cool, huh?”
“I guess,” said Ken. “So this thing would kill its own species. I’ve heard of that with chimps, killing rival troupes and things. Or lions that take over a pride will kill all the cubs.”
“Almost like that, but not exactly. Those are examples of animals who kill to increase the propagation of their own genes. The rogue is non-breeding. It acts on behalf of the whole species by only killing individuals with a genetic defect or communicable disease.”
“Weird,” said Ken. “But what benefit is there to the individual?”
“None,” said Mike. “It’s more like a hive mentality in that way. Doing the thing that’s best for the whole species so they don’t go extinct. It’s like a one-in-a-billion creature. It would only come out in the most dire of circumstances.”
“And you think that my patient is one of these rogue mutations?” asked Ken. “I don’t get it.”
“Nope, not at all,” said Mike. “The opposite, in fact.” He placed his empty beer glass near the edge of the table, to attract the attention of the waiter. “What have you told me about this kid? He’s good at sports, he’s developing early, he’s smart with a great memory, and he’s got heightened senses. This kid could be the perfect extinction vector. That would make him the target of the rogue.”
Ken chuckled at the assertion—“How so?”
“Take a look at the results when you get back to your desk. Look at the abnormalities I circled in his dad’s results and compare those to your kid. They’re nearly identical, and it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. Then glance at what you thought was contamination in the mom’s sample. Why did everyone assume it’s a contamination?”
“Because it’s so out of place, and its clearly a duplicate from Davey’s results,” said Ken.
“Right,” said Mike. “But what if it’s not? What if the kid somehow infected his mom with that genome.”
“Like a retrovirus? Like HIV?”
“Exactly,” agreed Mike. “But this abnormality is accompanied by early puberty, above average intelligence and senses—so he’s better able to survive and thrive—likability, and, best of all, situational clumsiness.” Mike ticked off the attributes on his fingers.
“Why does the clumsiness help the disease?” asked Ken.
“Imagine that this thing can spread through blood contact. What better way to gain blood contact than a clumsy kid? People will sometimes shy away from a bleeding adult, but everyone runs to help a bleeding kid,” said Mike.
“That’s quite a theory,” said Ken. “So if I’ve got this straight, then this all starts with a terrible genetic defect that a whole group of people inherits.”
“Yup,” said Mike, “the whole tribe has it.”
“And they all commit suicide because they somehow realize that their existence threatens the whole species. But one of them survives, and he’s the perfect killer.”
“That’s right,” said Mike.
“But there’s also a kid. He’s a perfect extinction vector and the perfect killer wants to hunt the kid down?” asked Ken.
“Makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective,” said Mike.
Ken laughed. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Well, you’ve got to test the viability of the species somehow,” explained Mike. “Otherwise we’re just taking up space when the crows, or snakes, or trees should be taking over. You’ve got to think of the whole ecosystem as one big machine. Dinosaurs go and mammals come up. It’s all one big optimization. You can’t narrow your focus on just one species without thinking about what’s optimal for the whole planet. So, you get this perfect disease and a perfect cure and let them battle it out.”