Fish Child

Why is it that these sort of things seem to happen so much in the Orient: children turning into fish, into trees, into Ghidora!

Intrepid reader Justin, Esq., clued me in to this condition, and because its medical, and strange, it is blogworthy, or rather blogkoveworthy. So the disease is Lamellar Icthyosis. I was led to believe from the article and from my extensive training in rare genetic diseases that this would be a central disorder, effecting the hypothalamus and the body's thermostat. Oh, but how the weak have fallen! It is actually a problem with what appears to be keratin synthesis, the layer of proteinaceous tissue that covers your outer layer of skin, rendering you for the most part water and foreign-body impermeant. In Lamellar icythosis, it appears as if a defect in the keratinocyte transglutaminase is causing the malformed keratin layer. The boy's associated overheating is somewhat paradoxical, as the chief concern early on in the child's life is actually hypothermia, as they cannot retain heat with their crappy epidermis. Unfortunately, there is no cure or treatment, and the child is relegated to a tough, and unfortunately, probably shortened, life.

Interestingly, the rate of this RARE disease is 1:600,000. I nor any of my cohorts have heard of this before. Yet everyone makes a big freaking stink about Guillan-Barre and the flu vaccine, which has an incidence of 1:1,000,000. Yet, the mortality of influenza is roughly 1:10,000. Lord Help Us All.