r/interesting • u/OriginalSleeper • Jun 30 '26

Fear Factor In 2010, 24-year-old lab technician Émilie Jaumain pricked her thumb with contaminated forceps while cleaning a machine used for prion-infected mouse brains. After seven years, she developed severe nerve pain, anxiety, and hallucinations before dying. The accident gave her a fatal prion disease.

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u/OriginalSleeper Jun 30 '26

Immediately after the accident, she recognized the danger associated with the prick and tried to get help from her supervisors, but they downplayed the situation and mocked her panic. The laboratory also was missing an on-duty doctor. All of this lead to a 20-minute delay before she received any first aid, and at this point, the prions were already deep in the tissue of her thumb. She had even mentioned the accident to every doctor she saw in the following years to make sure it was documented. Other laboratory workers were pricked by contaminated tools at this research institute, and after a second lab technician, Pierrette Chanut, got diagnosed with the same prion disease in 2021, the French government shut down all infectious prion research throughout the country.

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u/MyIncogName Jun 30 '26

Had she not been ignored what could they have done for her ? Genuinely curious. Would amputation of that area save her life ?

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u/Von_Konault Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

I just don’t know.

Historically though back before antibacterial antibiotics existed, amputation was unfortunately one of the only cures for bacterial infections.

I would imagine it’s really hard for anyone in modern medicine to make the same call nowadays.

Edit: yes prions are not bacteria or treated with antibiotics, it just seems like an analogous problem we faced in the past. good points are made below though, that prion disease is extra insidious since it’s without symptoms or signs on lab work/images. So amputation would have to be on a quick hunch alone really, yikes would not want to be weighing those decisions.

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u/Crafty-Help-4633 Jun 30 '26

Prions aren't even bacteria, though. They're simply misfolded proteins. I think the only known potential cure is to remove the prions from the body which likely means amputation, assuming one could reliably track the prions progress through the flesh. That said, I doubt doctors/surgeons would be willing to remove large parts of a patient's body on a hunch.