The Milwaukee protocol requires doctors to kill you!
Rabies has a survival rate of 0%. A person has just 24 hours (or 48 hours if they are immunized) to get to a hospital after being bitten by an animal carrying the virus. To prevent it from reaching the nervous system. Therefore, if not treated immediately, the patient can die.
The illness starts off with the symptoms of the flu, for example, headaches, weakness, and a fever that typically lasts for days. However, incubation can take weeks or even months. Moreover, within a short period of time, the symptoms develop into neurological issues that end in agitation, anxiety, and cerebral malfunction. Patients also develop delirium and become hydrophobic. Less than 20 known examples of human survival from clinical symptoms have been recorded. The details are sparse on most of them. The symptoms linger for 2–10 days and are almost always deadly.
How did the Rabies patients manage to live?
Some patients needed the controversial Milwaukee protocol. It is a last-resort treatment that results in almost full brain death. However, its efficacy is hotly contested, and most doctors no longer recommend it. But in the past, it has helped some patients beat this powerful illness.
Milwaukee Protocol
The Milwaukee Protocol, by Dr. Rodney Willoughby Jr., is an urgent effort to ward off rabies in patients. The Milwaukee Protocol is based on the body’s natural ability to fight off the rabies virus, but only when given adequate time.
Willoughby Jr. and colleagues proposed that the virus may be slowed down just enough to keep the body alive. Moreover, give the immune system crucial time to fight it off if brain activity can be decreased to the absolute minimum.
The protocol was initially tried on a 15-year-old girl. She received a mixture of antiviral medications while being dosed with medicines to induce a coma and suppress nerve activity. Furthermore, she underwent a difficult procedure but was eventually discharged from the hospital after 76 days. She had trouble walking and a speech impediment, according to further follow-ups. After graduating from college, she gave birth to twins in 2016.
The Milwaukee protocol’s creators later claimed that it had rescued 18 individuals as of 2018. Two in the US and the rest in Peru. However, no proper documentation is available.
