Interview of Dr. Rachel Bisette
(Dr. Rachel Bisette is a virologist and the main character in a new medical thriller, Blood of the White Bear, by Marcia Calhoun Forecki and Gerald Schnitzer. This virtual interview took place in the imagination of the authors.)
Dr. Bisette, full disclosure - you are a character in a book, correct?
Yes, I am. I never expected to be a character in a work of fiction, but here I am.
And the book is called?
Blood of the White Bear.
Who is the white bear? Is that you?
Oh no. In southwest Native American culture, the white bear is the healer, the nurturer, and the dreamer.
I see. I suppose we learn much more about that in the book, am I correct?
Oh, yes.
Dr. Bisette, you are the virologist who discovered the vaccine against the hantavirus, Sin Nombre 2, during the horrific pandemic that broke out in the Southwest United States and kept the country, and the world really, terrified for weeks. But, let’s go back a bit. Your early work in virology was done in a laboratory in Connecticut, working against a very different disease, isn’t that right?
That’s correct. I was working at Socoro Pharmaceuticals on a vaccine for rheumatoid arthritis. We had done great work on the virus, and were ready to begin clinical trials. Unfortunately, I was taken off the research. There were allegations and the FBI became involved.
Allegations of what nature?
I’m not at liberty to talk about it, ongoing investigation and all that. It’s all in the book, but you can’t hear about it from me.
I guess we’ll have to accept that answer. Tell us about Sin Nombre 2, the pandemic that put nearly a quarter of the United States into quarantine.
The whole Southwest was under quarantine and martial law. Sin Nombre virus, or SNV, is a hantavirus. It is carried by deer mice, and humans who come into contact with an infected animal, its next or its droppings, becomes infected very easily. There have been outbreaks of SNV in the Southwest many times, passed from deer mice to humans. The virus manifests as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which is usually fatal. The most recent outbreak in the Four Corners was in 1993. However, SNV does not pass from human to human. What we were dealing with this time, however, was a mutated form of the virus, which we called SN2. The initial patients were exposed directly to the virus directly from deer mice material, but then the virus mutated and began to spread by human-to-human contact. That was when we knew we had a potential pandemic on our hands, the definition of which is a virulent, highly lethal illness that spreads from human to human.
I was drafted, you might say, although very willingly, by the Centers for Disease Control to go to the University of New Mexico and work on finding a vaccine when the outbreak began. But, I was being pulled to New Mexico when the epidemic first broke out, before we even knew what we had on our hands with Sin Nombre 2.
Can you explain what you mean by that last statement? What was pulling you to the Four Corners?
My parents were killed in a plane crash when I was just a toddler. I was actually with them, the only survivor. I was rescued by someone I only vaguely remembered. I never saw her again and never knew her name. I know it now, of course, it was Eva Yellow Horn. When I arrived in New Mexico, I learned from the public health officials there that Eva Yellow Horn had inadvertently exposed the first patients to the SN2 virus. She did not know it, no one did. But, we had to find her to get to the beginning of the mutation chain if we were to have any hope of developing a vaccine.
But, Eva Yellow Horn was not the pull. No, it was the visions and dreams of the White Bear Kachina that I began seeing in Connecticut.
Visions? You mean, hallucinations?
Possibly, or dreams spilling over into my conscious mind. I consulted a hypnotherapist about it, and was able to remember the woman who rescued me in the plane crash. I don’t think I’m giving away too much of the plot of the book when I say that my Uncle Henry- he and my Aunt Daisy were the ones who raised me after my parents died-never believed that the plane crash was an accident.
Can you tell us more about that?
No. The authors wouldn’t like me giving too much away. But, it’s pretty fascinating and it involves a terrible accident that actually occurred in 1979 at Church Rock, New Mexico and involved the release of an enormous amount of radioactive material onto Native American land. You can look that up.
Eva Yellow Horn, how did you find her?
Once I arrived in the Four Corners, I quickly realized that Eva held the answer, not only to the virus, but to my personal questions about what happened to my parents as well. I can’t take all the credit of course. I had help from John Osborne, an archeologist who knows more about the Four Corners than any non-native, but whom you would not want your daughter to meet. Enough said about that. Ted Fuller put his career on the line to help me elude the FBI, but of course, he’s in love with me. Calvin Yellow Horn was helpful, although he didn’t intend to be. They are only a few of the fascinating people share this book with me.
So, how did you find Eva Yellow Horn? What did she tell you? Did you and Ted Fuller get together in the end?
Sorry, you’ll have to read the book for those answers. Marcia Calhoun Forecki and Gerald Schnitzer tell the whole story. Blood of the White Bear, published by WriteLife, will be available in October 2013.
Dr. Bisette, full disclosure - you are a character in a book, correct?
Yes, I am. I never expected to be a character in a work of fiction, but here I am.
And the book is called?
Blood of the White Bear.
Who is the white bear? Is that you?
Oh no. In southwest Native American culture, the white bear is the healer, the nurturer, and the dreamer.
I see. I suppose we learn much more about that in the book, am I correct?
Oh, yes.
Dr. Bisette, you are the virologist who discovered the vaccine against the hantavirus, Sin Nombre 2, during the horrific pandemic that broke out in the Southwest United States and kept the country, and the world really, terrified for weeks. But, let’s go back a bit. Your early work in virology was done in a laboratory in Connecticut, working against a very different disease, isn’t that right?
That’s correct. I was working at Socoro Pharmaceuticals on a vaccine for rheumatoid arthritis. We had done great work on the virus, and were ready to begin clinical trials. Unfortunately, I was taken off the research. There were allegations and the FBI became involved.
Allegations of what nature?
I’m not at liberty to talk about it, ongoing investigation and all that. It’s all in the book, but you can’t hear about it from me.
I guess we’ll have to accept that answer. Tell us about Sin Nombre 2, the pandemic that put nearly a quarter of the United States into quarantine.
The whole Southwest was under quarantine and martial law. Sin Nombre virus, or SNV, is a hantavirus. It is carried by deer mice, and humans who come into contact with an infected animal, its next or its droppings, becomes infected very easily. There have been outbreaks of SNV in the Southwest many times, passed from deer mice to humans. The virus manifests as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which is usually fatal. The most recent outbreak in the Four Corners was in 1993. However, SNV does not pass from human to human. What we were dealing with this time, however, was a mutated form of the virus, which we called SN2. The initial patients were exposed directly to the virus directly from deer mice material, but then the virus mutated and began to spread by human-to-human contact. That was when we knew we had a potential pandemic on our hands, the definition of which is a virulent, highly lethal illness that spreads from human to human.
I was drafted, you might say, although very willingly, by the Centers for Disease Control to go to the University of New Mexico and work on finding a vaccine when the outbreak began. But, I was being pulled to New Mexico when the epidemic first broke out, before we even knew what we had on our hands with Sin Nombre 2.
Can you explain what you mean by that last statement? What was pulling you to the Four Corners?
My parents were killed in a plane crash when I was just a toddler. I was actually with them, the only survivor. I was rescued by someone I only vaguely remembered. I never saw her again and never knew her name. I know it now, of course, it was Eva Yellow Horn. When I arrived in New Mexico, I learned from the public health officials there that Eva Yellow Horn had inadvertently exposed the first patients to the SN2 virus. She did not know it, no one did. But, we had to find her to get to the beginning of the mutation chain if we were to have any hope of developing a vaccine.
But, Eva Yellow Horn was not the pull. No, it was the visions and dreams of the White Bear Kachina that I began seeing in Connecticut.
Visions? You mean, hallucinations?
Possibly, or dreams spilling over into my conscious mind. I consulted a hypnotherapist about it, and was able to remember the woman who rescued me in the plane crash. I don’t think I’m giving away too much of the plot of the book when I say that my Uncle Henry- he and my Aunt Daisy were the ones who raised me after my parents died-never believed that the plane crash was an accident.
Can you tell us more about that?
No. The authors wouldn’t like me giving too much away. But, it’s pretty fascinating and it involves a terrible accident that actually occurred in 1979 at Church Rock, New Mexico and involved the release of an enormous amount of radioactive material onto Native American land. You can look that up.
Eva Yellow Horn, how did you find her?
Once I arrived in the Four Corners, I quickly realized that Eva held the answer, not only to the virus, but to my personal questions about what happened to my parents as well. I can’t take all the credit of course. I had help from John Osborne, an archeologist who knows more about the Four Corners than any non-native, but whom you would not want your daughter to meet. Enough said about that. Ted Fuller put his career on the line to help me elude the FBI, but of course, he’s in love with me. Calvin Yellow Horn was helpful, although he didn’t intend to be. They are only a few of the fascinating people share this book with me.
So, how did you find Eva Yellow Horn? What did she tell you? Did you and Ted Fuller get together in the end?
Sorry, you’ll have to read the book for those answers. Marcia Calhoun Forecki and Gerald Schnitzer tell the whole story. Blood of the White Bear, published by WriteLife, will be available in October 2013.
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