Biogenesis
Page 6
Oddly, while Dr. Akedera’s journal contains a meticulous account of everything else that happened that day, there is only one line about the baby mouse: “There were no markings on the wings of the newborn winged mouse.” Other than this sentence in support of his standing longevity hypothesis we find nothing.
In the final analysis, nothing that can be said about the incident escapes the realm of speculation. We are left with no option but to think that Dr. Sakakibara’s comment –– “If one mouse did remain, what could ever have come of it?” –– says it all.
Immediately after the interview, pneumonia complicated by respiratory failure plunged Dr. Sakakibara into a coma from which he never awakened, and he died just three days later. I regretted having induced him to perform such a burdensome task on his sickbed, but it was too late.
Apparently, he used the word processor for as long as he could, and his last words as saved on the floppy disk were “the child’s” with no context.
Thanks to the interview and as per Dr. Sakakibara’s wish, I feel that some of the mysteries surrounding the winged mouse have been revealed herein, but others have remained unsolved. As the reader may already have wondered, prior to Dr. Akedera coming on stage, why had the mice not given birth even upon expiring in autumn? Perhaps, in the recent instances, having kept them apart in cages facilitated the communication of a death signal but not the direct contact presumed necessary for mating, but things remain murky for the preceding cases. These pages also lack an explanation that can take the place of Dr. Akedera’s hypothesis about a large litter. We are left to devise our own conjectures on these issues, but given that the fetus in Dr. Akedera’s experiment was in an inanimate state, it is possible that at some point, and by some cause, a slight slippage had been introduced into the timing of death and birth (such that death preceded birth). Alternatively, the animals’ very reproductive capacity had deteriorated.
If I may be allowed a detour, there is something about the final scene that caught my attention as a doctor and that I would like to explore. I believe that it is a hypothesis that is accompanied by a certain degree of physical evidence. The issue, also noted in Dr. Akedera’s journal, concerns the ECG data taken in the last moments. The waveforms recorded via the front and rear paws of the winged mouse do not feature the sharp peaks normally seen in vertebrate species but rather a gentle sine curve. In humans we observe the distinct P, QRS, T segments, corresponding to atrial stimulation, ventricular stimulation, and recovery from stimulation, respectively, a basic waveform that obtains even for frogs. This calls to mind the finding that Dr. Ishikawa presented about a heart structure that lacks chambers.3 The slides from his academic presentation show a roller pump-like structure that would create a steady standing wave in lieu of the pulsing waves caused by heartbeats/myocardial contraction. In a book of my own, I have argued that the electrical pulse for a rotating artificial heart would describe a sine curve.11 This brings us to the pulse. While heartbeats per se do not exist for winged mice, if we consider one period of the sine curve as the equivalent, then the rate is as low as a single beat per minute. Since this value remained approximately constant from when bodily movements were still observed to just moments before death, it is unlikely to belong to terminal conditions brought on by enfeeblement. Given that the heartbeat for most small animals, including mice, is generally very high, ranging from one hundred to two hundred beats per minute, this is indeed highly unique.
Animals with a heartbeat quite likely perceive each beat as a subjective unit of time. One beat for a human at rest is roughly equivalent to one second. In general, the smaller the animal, the shorter that time, and a mouse’s heart is said to beat an elephant’s lifetime’s worth in one year. While an elephant is an animal that moves extremely slowly from the mouse’s perspective, what this means in terms of awareness is nothing other than that a mouse’s life and an elephant’s life are equally long. Likewise, the movements of turtles, which are said to live longer than humans, seem awfully sluggish to us. Winged mice are a species with an even slower heartbeat, in line with the fact that they are animals with a meager concept of time (= pulse). As Dr. Ishikawa once indicated, winged mice also have a variety of singular organs, and in light of the unique circulatory system it is possible that their makeup adapted appropriately. In humans too, even with adequate blood flow, it is believed that prolonged use of a roller pump-like heart-lung machine, in the course of heart surgery for instance, damages our other organs, which have long adapted to pulsing streams. In addition, the blood flow’s effect on body temperature and contribution to cell metabolism is a deeply interesting issue in the context of lifespans. A constant hibernation-like state where the cells’ clock hands advance slowly would of course yield a long lifespan. Yet proving this now, in the absence of specimens, is impossible.
Despite these pages, some readers may think that nothing has been solved in the scientific sense. Indeed, nearly all of the events, not to mention the above excursus, lack incontrovertible material evidence and by and large do not rise above the level of subjective interpretation. In fact, some readers may utilize the content of this document to form their own hypotheses and to assemble a completely different narrative.
What I came to realize after sifting through the massive amount of log entries is that this is not science as we understand it. Both of the defendants are now deceased and their actions will remain un-indicted. Whether or not what Dr. Sakakibara felt compelled to get across in the face of death has gotten across awaits the judgment of the reader who has followed us thus far.
The cover of this year’s January 14th edition of Nature12 featured a close-up photo of the face of a mouse without eyes. It was from a paper on mole rats.
In that paper, the authors draw a unique conclusion. It was long believed that the eyeballs of mole rats had regressed, but as detailed observation and pathological considerations indicated that the eyes exist, hidden, along with a developed signal transmission route from the oculi to the brain, it may in fact be the result of evolution.
The mainstream of modern biology is microcellular research, which proceeds by using the simplest of cells and genetic material, and which ascribes maximal value to universal axioms. The pages of top journals like Nature and Cell are filled with the genetic control mechanisms and intra-cellular signal transmissions common to all organisms from intestinal bacteria to Homo sapiens. Compared to traditional natural history, interest in the source material has clearly waned, and research such as that on the mole rat has become exceedingly rare.
Given that winged mouse research held an even greater impact than that on mole rats, it is truly a shame, but I have been informed that the original personnel, Mitsuo Miura, Yoji Ogawa, et al., are currently considering a submission based on data compiled from the logs of Drs. Akedera and Sakakibara. This past summer, the novel Jurassic Park was widely discussed in both the United States and Japan. The story is about reconstituting living dinosaurs in today’s world via blood cell DNA extracted from ancient blood-sucking insects trapped in amber. Immediately prior to the release of the movie based on the novel, the June 10th edition of Nature13 included a paper reporting a DNA sequence extracted from paramecium found in Lebanese amber dating back 120 million years (when dinosaurs walked the planet). It is not certain whether the fiction preceded the fact (I personally find it more interesting if it did), but likewise, one day we might reconstitute the winged mouse from its DNA. Or rather, I pray that we do.
In accordance with Dr. Sakakibara’s wishes, his body underwent an autopsy on the day he passed away. Several of his organs had withered or become enlarged in ways that were not consistent with his illness. Any relationship to the cause of his illness remains obscure. We expect to learn more about this as well in the near future, in the form of a case study.
Much of the concrete data, including photographs and figures, had to be omitted owing to copyrights retained by the late Dr. Akedera. I beg my readers’ forgiveness. The photographs included are
reprinted from The Four Seasons of Kamuikotan and the Kitasorachi News.
Tatsuaki Ishiguro
August 1993
References
1. Takeuchi, Kiyoshi, The Biota of Kamuikotan, Kamui Medical Co., Ltd.
2. The Four Seasons of Kamuikotan, photographed by Katsumi Igarashi, BEN Planning
3. Presentation Number 1192, Minutes from the 51st Annual Meeting of the Rare Biota of Japan Academic Association
4. Ishikawa, S., Mouse, 82, 96–101 (1982)
5. “Confusion Surrounding the Winged Mouse,” Kitasorachi News, 5 October 1983 edition
6. Sakakibara, Keiichi, “Ecology of the Winged Mouse,” Ecology, November 1985 edition, Nemoto Books
7. “The Life Form Called the Winged Mouse,” Science Bulletin, July 1990 edition, Otsuki Press
8. Genetic Operations Manual, New Edition, Sato Books
9. “The Extinction of the Winged Mouse,” Kitasorachi News, 11 September 1989, evening edition
10. Ishiguro, Tatsuaki, Compass Medical Outline, Mech Publishing
11. Ishiguro, Tatsuaki, Random Surgeonology, Kanehara Publishing
12. Cooper, H. M., and Herbin, M., Nature, 361, 156–159 (1993)
13. Cano, R. J., et al., Nature, 363, 536–538 (1993)
PART TWO
Snow Woman
There is a condition known as hypothermia. The term comes from the Greek for “low body temperature” and usually signifies a pathological state where a loss of body temperature can end in freezing to death. It also, however, refers to rare instances where the patient’s metabolism stabilizes at a lower body temperature. “Idiopathic hypothermia” has been reported only sporadically worldwide, and an accurate portrait of the condition does not exist at the moment. Although the prevailing view is that the decreased metabolism leads to a longer lifespan, there is a high incidence of death from accompanying illnesses, and unlike with “idiopathic hyperthermia,” which has been shown to have no bearing on lifespans, as of yet no statistical data on the average convalescent is available. The catchall term “idiopathic” actually encompasses various pathological conditions that have been proposed, from genetic factors, mutations in the temperature-regulating abilities of the brain, and hormonal imbalances, to the production of chemical substances usually associated with hibernation. There are very few individual cases where a specific cause has been identified, and it is said that the condition may in fact be a conglomeration of several. Furthermore, there are cases where pigment production is affected, as it is in albinism, and research is currently underway to determine their connection.
Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada Syndrome and Takayasu Disease are among the relatively small number of illnesses discovered by Japanese, some of which, however, are considered to be medically significant. While not known as such among medical professionals, since it was not named after the person who discovered it unlike the preceding examples, it was a young Japanese doctor who made the earliest known report worldwide of “idiopathic hypothermia.” An Internet MEDLINE search of the phrase will display the Japanese author name H. Yuhki. This refers to one Koho Yuhki (“Koho” being an alternative reading of “Hironori”), an army doctor who had been assigned to the Ashibetsu-Shinjo Clinic in Hokkaido in the mid 1920s. He was the first person in the world to report, in an article published in the German medical journal ARZT, the symptoms of a woman whose standard body temperature was 82.4°F. Normally, at that temperature, the heartbeat becomes irregular then ceases altogether, and respiration stops completely as well; the report flaunted the conventional medical wisdom of the era. Immediately after its publication, Imperial University Professor Koin Aoyama and Nursing Institute Director Iwao Otsuki, along with many other doctors considered to be authorities, offered to examine and shed light on the condition, but refusing all such requests Yuhki attempted to treat the woman on his own at a small clinic.
The all-too-shocking content of Yuhki’s objective evaluation of the condition, which included the possibility of an extended lifespan due to lower metabolism and the presence of hibernation-related substances, elicited a negative reaction and the title of “fraud” for the army doctor, who was denied public funding and forced to finance the treatment out of his own pocket. Then, on February 22, 1927, only one year after the paper was published, the evening edition of the Hokkaido Daily reported Yuhki’s death, along with that of the woman, from unknown causes. The truth of the matter, which some deemed a lovers’ suicide, remained obscure, but on February 22, 1997—exactly seventy years after his death to the day, oddly enough—a massive number of military medical documents that had been sealed subsequent to World War II at the former Army Library (now the Korin Museum) were found, and Yuhki’s treatment logs and journal saw the light of day along with other documents such as the autopsy reports on the victims of the Mt. Hakkoda March. In addition to diary-like entries he must have written each day, glosses on parts that he considered important at a later date appear in the same journal, making for a rather unbalanced whole, but the record goes into great detail regarding the events of that time and could almost be considered a type of prose. What is more, after years of abiding by Yuhki’s order to keep her mouth shut, Nurse Tae Sugita (who still resides in Shinjo) was prompted by the stunning revelations to break her silence at long last, thereby supplying numerous new facts that have reconfigured the truth of what happened. Sugita, whose father had served as military support staff, was only sixteen at the time and more of a nursing apprentice than a nurse, but having witnessed the events as the doctor’s close assistant, she was able to leave behind valuable testimony prior to her death earlier this year. The following account of the incident that occurred in Shinjo, Ashibetsu Village, Hokkaido Prefecture, in 1926 is based on Yuhki’s diagnostic charts and journal and Sugita’s testimony.
Dr. Koho Yuhki, aged thirty-seven, was assigned to Army 7th Division in Asahikawa on October 1, 1925. A clinic had opened in Shinjo, where training for winter marches took place, and he had been ordered to head it. His job description, according to the recently discovered commission papers, was simply, “special medical research in the north.” Shinjo, a mountainous area in the vicinity of the village of Ashibetsu, had once been home to a military logging site and doubled as a training facility for new recruits. By Surgeon General Soraji Ishiguro’s orders, Yuhki was to research clinical treatments for frostbite, at the time a nearly incurable malady for which hardly any measures had been established. Although development of the prevention and treatment of frostbite was a significant priority for troops to be dispatched to northern fronts such as Russia, it was a condition rarely seen on the mostly temperate main island of Honshu. There were few researchers, and the need to experience colder climes is thought to have ushered the decision to post Yuhki there.
Thanks to nearly daily examinations of frostbitten soldiers brought to the clinic, Yuhki produced a string of research results, including the fact that rapid thawing in a 113°F bath was preferable over gradual thawing and massages in the field, which were anathema. In addition, upon puncturing the blisters, filled with cloudy liquid, he tried several traditional ointments, compared their effects, and even developed a special medicine of his own concoction that he named the “H-47” and that used a mold extract. Although these were medical facts, at the same time they were military secrets that Yuhki was strictly prohibited from publishing, and thus he was limited to reporting his progress to Ishiguro. For this reason Yuhki is not known for his work on frostbite, but it was revolutionary for its time, being half a step ahead of the intense research that Russia was conducting to counter freezing climes.
It was on the day the coldest temperature ever to be observed in Japan was recorded in nearby Asahikawa (February 22, 1926) that Mitsuo Gondo, a soldier charged with bringing in firewood to the barracks each day, discovered a woman in the woodshed, where apparently she had fallen into a coma after entering to rest awhile. He carried her into the clinic. The medical chart describes the woman who had been brought in
as having white hair and a deathly pale complexion and even notes that her torso was showing signs of stiffness. Nurse Sugita recalled that when she held the woman’s arm to take her pulse, it felt so cold that she assumed for a moment that the woman must have already frozen to death. When Yuhki examined the patient, however, he found a slow pulse and confirmed slight movements of her chest and thereby respiration, upon which he immediately undertook attempts to revive her. According to the paper Yuhki later published in German, upon her arrival at the clinic the woman’s body temperature was 75.2°F, her pulse twenty beats per minute, and her respiration rate three breaths per minute.
Although her condition seemed relatively stable, actively warming her somehow resulted in a lower blood pressure, as Yuhki noted in the medical chart: “Blood pressure dipped upon warming, perhaps because capillaries, constricted under low temperature, responded to heating with overcompensating expansion.”
If her blood vessels had contracted to maintain blood pressure after her heart rate had slowed, then, assuming that the warming had not restored cardiac activity, blood vessels expanding indeed meant less resistance and lower pressure. Observation at room temperature was the only possible treatment for such symptoms whether or not they owed to a unique metabolism, and Yuhki was reduced to adopting the gradual warming method that he held to be anathema for frostbite patients, though, to be fair, the conditions were not identical. It was a little over two days later that the woman regained consciousness without any perceptible change in her condition, and Yuhki was in for an even greater surprise. While her mind seemed clear, and her overall condition stable, her body temperature never rose above 86°F, and her pulse, though it fluctuated, never exceeded thirty beats per minute.