"Billions of Puppets With
Poisoned Minds": Dr. Neuman Explains the Worldwide Threat of Fungi
Murray [TV Host]: [in progress] And that's your biggest worry?
Dr. Schoenheiss: Yes, any kind of virus but most probably something
similar to influenza.
Murray: Because of air travel.
Dr. Schoenheiss: Through the air...coughing --
Murray: I'm sorry. I meant people on planes. That was something you
described in your book.
Dr. Schoenheiss: Yes, a new virus in Madagascar, say, could be in Chicago
within a matter of weeks and we end up with a global pandemic. "Pan"
meaning all -- the whole world becomes sick all at once.
Murray: Hmm...And Dr. Neuman, you're also an epidemiologist. I presume
the prospect of a viral pandemic keeps you up at night as well.
Dr. Neuman: No.
Murray: No?
Dr. Neuman: No.
Murray: All right, well that's our show.
Dr. Neuman: No, mankind has been at war with a virus from the start.
Sometimes millions of people die, as in an actual war, but in the end we
always win.
Murray: But, you -- just to be clear: You -- You do think microorganisms
pose a threat.
Dr. Neuman: Oh, in the most dire terms.
Murray: Bacteria.
Dr. Neuman: No.
Murray: You like saying "no."
Dr. Neuman: Yes.
Murray: Not bacteria, not viruses, so...?
Dr. Neuman: Fungus. [audience laughter and expressions of skepticism].
Yes, that's the usual response. Fungi seem harmless enough. Many species
know otherwise, because there are some fungi who seek not to kill but to
control. Let me ask you, where do we get LSD from?
Murray: Where do you get it from?
Dr. Neuman: It comes from ergot, a fungus. Psilocybin? Also a fungus.
Viruses can make us ill, but fungi can alter our very minds. There's a
fungus that infects insects; gets inside an ant, for example, travels
through its circulatory
system to the ant's brain and then floods it with hallucinogens, thus
bending the ant's mind to its will. Fungus starts to direct the ant's
behavior, telling it where to go, what to do, like a puppeteer with a
marionette.
And it gets worse. The fungus needs food to live, so it begins to devour
its host from within, replacing the ant's flesh with its own. But it
doesn't let its victim die. No, it -- it keeps its puppet alive by
preventing decomposition. How? Where do we get penicillin from?
Murray: Fungus.
Dr. Schoenheiss: [Sighs.]
Murray: Dr. Schoenheiss, you're in distress.
Dr. Schoenheiss: Fungal infection of this kind is real but not in
humans.
Dr. Neuman: True, fungi cannot survive if its host's internal
temperature is over 94 degrees; and currently there are no reasons for
fungi to evolve to be able to withstand higher temperatures. But what if
that were to change? What if, for instance, the world were to get
slightly warmer? Well, now there is reason to evolve. One gene mutates
and an Ascomycota, a Candida, Ergot, Cordyceps,
Aspergillus -- any one
of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking
control, not of millions of us but billions of us; billions of puppets
with poisoned minds permanently fixed on one unifying goal: to spread
the infection to every last human alive, by any means necessary. And
there are no treatments for this; no preventatives; no cures. They don't
exist. It's not even possible to make them.
