In this medical fiction, a pampered heir’s anti-antibiotic crusade ends after an encounter with a bear cub renders him a victim of his own misguided beliefs.
This medical fiction tale is one of a collection of stories that are like “Final Destination” meets “The Monkey’s Paw” (W. W. Jacobs, 1902). As such, they are tragedies that appeal most to readers who enjoy the inexorable pull of a story arc that leads to doom. The technical details surrounding the event are drawn from real cases in the US OSHA incident report database or similar sources and are therefore entirely realistic, even if seemingly outlandish.
Reginald Forbes “Jiff” Jefferson was the heir to a sliver of fortune but a large slice of family name. A great-grandfather had been a significant figure, with buildings, streets, and parks named after him. Old Man Jefferson had amassed millions, leaving a legacy of generosity, but his great-grandson was not so much a chip off the old block as he was a woodworm living off its carcass.
As expected of a Jefferson, Jiff attended a prestigious private school where class sizes were small, each student receiving individual attention from highly qualified teachers. Students wore uniforms designed by a Parisian couturier with a decades-long waiting list. The school, an academic palace, also provided elite sports like golf, lacrosse, polo, and fencing. Its motto, “Ubi principes futuri aedificantur,” was engraved above the oaken doors and impressed into both the students’ hearts and their parents’ wallets.
With such an upbringing, Jiff’s path to becoming a coke addict and an obnoxious man seemed almost inevitable. His schoolmates supplied easy access to drugs, and his family’s wealth and power provided Jiff both the impunity to use them and the protection to escape normal penalties. When puberty hit, his sense of entitlement combined with wanton power resulted in a trail of abandoned girlfriends and a string of sexual abuse allegations. Jiff’s family disapproved of his lifestyle and actions, but begrudgingly paid off his accusers on condition of silence.
After graduation, Jiff half-heartedly attempted a string of business ventures—all of which ended in bankruptcy—before finding his calling later in life: promoting antibiotic denial.
It began with a seductive and lucrative partnership with Eva, an enigmatic woman who stroked his ego and rattled his libido. Eva, who wore a silver bracelet to ward off witches, was a rep for a range of corporations shilling untested herbal alternatives to antibiotics. Under her guidance, Jiff became a sought-after public speaker, railing against the “horrors” of the global antibiotic market and the turpitude of the pharmaceutical companies he depicted as evil swamp creatures spreading across the planet.
Leveraging his family name and social network of contacts came naturally to Jiff, and his days filled with paid talking gigs, radio interviews, and product launches. Invitations to grand venues piled up and the cash flowed like water. Jiff also possessed a natural and well-honed ability to shrug off responsibility for the effects of his ministry. He’d once visited an island community to give a talk on the evils of antibiotics at which the president and minister of health were honored guests. Shortly afterwards, the government canceled all antibiotic orders for the state hospital, replacing them with orders for homeopathic medicines, natural remedies, and a range of herbals and essential oils. Post-surgical infections climbed astronomically, with a sudden spike in fevers post-cesarean births, followed by a 30 percent death rate after 3-5 days. Less critical but more common were the beachgoers, anglers, and sailors suddenly showing up in the ER for vibrio and staphylococcus infections. When asked by a journalist if the sickness and deaths bothered him, Jiff felt momentarily stunned that anyone could blame him, but he quickly fired back a torrent of questions about 5G cellphone towers, the “well-documented link” between GMO foods and delinquency, and the scandal of fluoridated water. After a lifetime of shrugging off responsibility, blame ran off him like water off a duck’s back. Making the issue of blame less burdensome was the massive bonus he’d received for those orders.
As he aged, Jiff’s life spiraled further into excess, filled with risky behavior, substance abuse, and extravagant spending. To boost his dwindling sense of youth and masculinity, he purchased a Cybertruck and began posting juvenile pranks on TikTok.
One day while cruising the mountains surrounding his massive estate, Jiff spotted a dead bear cub. Always on the alert for meme-worthy images, he stopped, took selfies posing with his hand in the cub’s mouth, and posted the clips. Certain there’d be more images and memes to be teased out of the situation, he manhandled the carcass into the back of his truck.
After two days of driving around with the dead cub in his truck and no further selfie inspiration, Jiff settled for dumping it in a local park. Clasping the heavy body, he bumbled it to the kiddie play area, seated it on a swing, and zip-tied the cub’s front paws to the chains. He snapped and posted photos before heading home for a relaxing evening of scotch-drinking and big-screen TV-watching.
A couple of weeks later, Jiff jetted off to yet another lucrative speaking engagement, and after checking into his penthouse hotel room he realized he was feeling a bit feverish. He shrugged it off as travel weariness and went to bed, but a restless night filled with bouts of chills and sweats followed. Jiff woke the next morning feeling tired and headachy. He took an herbal supplement and headed to his morning presentation. By the time he finished his afternoon speech, his body ached, and his head pounded. Clearly his immune system was flagging, so he went back to bed with a hot aniseed and ginger toddy, a dose of vitamin C and zinc, and a few drops of high-potency homeopathic remedy.
In the early hours of the next morning, Jiff woke with a raging headache, muscles that felt like he had done fourteen rounds in a heavyweight title fight, and stomach contents that screamed for release. He ordered room service toast and coffee, dosed himself with ginger, ginseng, and more herbals and homeopathics, then slumped into a seat on his balcony, staring miserably at the distant waves rolling into the bay.
By lunchtime, Jiff’s phone rang constantly with sponsors and event coordinators desperate to track him down, but Jiff no longer had the interest or energy to answer. By mid-afternoon, Jiff had thoroughly evacuated his alimentary canal, and there was no longer anything of substance in his gastrointestinal tract. Next, the chest pains took center stage, tearing his attention away from everything else. Jiff suddenly realized that despite his money, social visibility, and powerful influence, he was in serious trouble. As the sun set over a distant azure sea, Jiff suffered the first of a series of small heart attacks caused by the Q fever bacteria he’d acquired from the newly deceased bear cub sixteen days prior.
Although the myopericarditis and encephalitis arm-wrestling over the prize of being the primary cause of death could have been countered by an early prescription of an antibiotic such as doxycycline, it was now too late. Jiff coughed, passed gas, and keeled over onto the tile, his body slowly surrendering its heat to the environment.
The post Medical Fiction: Jiff & the Biotic Bear first appeared on Physician's Weekly.