Abel Hacker

By

Susannah Benedict

Abel Hacker walked in for his final day of work. This was the day they announced their discovery to the world. He was a bit late. He had to swing by the excavation to tell Nico Arts, the famous Dutch archaeologist, that he could attend Peter de Knjiff’s speech where he announces his discovery to the world. The announcement was to take place in front of the excavation site, St. Catherine’s Church, in the city square of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Abel was called in to Eveline Altena’s office. “Yes, Ma’am?” he said, his Dutch accent filling up the room.

“Here is your assignment for the day. Take this tray and test my research, the needle is coated with HIV, so see to it that you don’t accidently prick yourself or anybody else,” she said as she handed him the tray.

“Yes, Miss Altena,” he said, walking out the door. As he was heading down the hallway, an intern bumped into him. “Sorry,” she said franticly. Abel calmly regained his composer and carried on. A little ways down the hall he realized there was a pain in his chest. He looked down to see the needle from the tray embedded in his shirt. He pulled it out and collapsed.

He woke up and hour later to find several coworkers standing over him. “Miss Altena is very worried about you; she said instead of you testing our allele on drug users, we should test it on you.”

“If the CCR5Δ32 allele can cure me, by all means use it,” Abel said, his voice cracking. “Please,” he added. “Why did I faint?”

“The doctor said you were in shock,” said the intern he bumped into, “but we don’t know the history of this allele. Can you tell us?”

“Yes, I can. I am a native of Eindhoven. I remember the winter of 2002. Nico Arts and his team were digging in the cemetery of St. Catherine’s Church, when they came across the body of a child. It turned out to be a 10-12 year old boy. They continued to work; this project shall be one of the greatest archaeological projects to ever come out of the Netherlands, the establishment of a major ancient DNA database. We have uncovered the bodies of over 750 citizens of Eindhoven. Our task was to recover DNA from each and every body discovered. We shall become great.” Abel laughed as he said that, but he took to coughing.

He carried on. “Researchers all over the world are now studying genetic variations in human populations, mostly the risk of diseases such as diabetes and resistance to others such as malaria. Our database shall help more than anyone can imagine. We span 600 years. 600 years! We found, as we hoped, the origin of the allele CCR5Δ32. It increases resistance to HIV. Nearly 10 percent of people today possess it and we have made it possible for others to have it.

“It first arose 3,100 to 7,800 years ago. We reckon it increased resistance to smallpox and the Black Death.

“It’s really made archaeology popular again. Did you know that in 2006 AIDS killed 2.9 million worldwide? Thanks to our research that number shall go down.

“Geneticists discover the variant in the mid-1990 when a select group of high risk individuals did not become infected. It prevents HIV from attaching to immune systems. The people who have one copy are 70 percent immune. Those lucky people with two are 100 percent immune.

“You know what we are? We are archeaoepidemiologists. Our field is archeaoepidmiology. It allows researchers to estimate effects of genetic variants under difficult environmental conditions.”

With a sigh he closed his eyes and goes to sleep; as he slept he did not notice that the doctor slipped in and told them that they discovered he possesses two copies of the CCR5Δ32 variant and if they have a copy of it with them, there is somebody else in the hospital who can use it. They agreed and left to take care of the other patients.