American girl feels no pain and smiles to her own blood
12/15/2004 16:46
Those people, who do not feel any pain at all, usually die before they turn 25
When the girl was 12 months, she could easily bite her own finger off and feel no pain at all. When she was three years old, she put her hand on a red-hot oven, and burnt her skin. Parents were shocked, when they saw blood all over the kitchen, while their daughter was sitting there smiling. The girl can also bite her tongue through when she eats. “This is not a gift from heaven, this is a curse!” the girl’s mother exclaims.
Five-year-old Ashlyn Blocker from the town of Patterson, Georgia, is sitting on the ground playing with her doll, while two cameras are filming her. Ashlyn suffers from one of the rarest diseases in the world. Adolf Hitler was highly interested in the phenomenon: he ordered to explore it in 1944 to create an army of fearless supersoldiers. When little Ashlyn falls down and scratches her keens, she does not cry or scream with pain. A child, who never cries, may seem to be a dream for every parent. Ashlyn’s parents, however, are not happy at all.
Thirty-five US citizens suffer from CIPA – an ultra rare disease, which deprives an individual of such an important natural protection as pain. There are a hundred people like that living on the whole planet. CIPA is a highly extraordinary genetic disorder. Scientists believe that the disorder may occur when parents have different blood groups. It may occur, although it does not happen with the majority of people.
A lot of parents would be happy to have a baby, who does not wake them up at night. Ashlyn’s mother was also happy to realize that her daughter was such a quiet little baby. However, the girl’s peaceful behavior raised suspicion with the woman and she decided to take her baby to the hospital. A research did not reveal anything strange, although doctors did not take a blood sample for the genetic analysis. When Ashlyn’s teeth started growing at the age of six months, the girl shredded her own lips with them. Doctors examined the girl in a special clinic and found out the reason of her unusual behavior. It turned out that Ashlyn’s genes, which were responsible for pain impulses, were damaged.
The little girl’s senses are fine, although she does not show any sensitivity to any kind of pain. In addition, the girl’s body does not produce sweat, which is very dangerous too – the child can die in very hot weather. Modern science does not have a remedy to cure the disease – that is why Ashlyn’s parents and relatives constantly fear for the baby’s life.
The fear of the girl’s parents is easy to understand: those, who do not feel any pain at all, usually die before they turn 25 years old. As a rule, painless individuals die of appendicitis: they do not feel pain in the right side, and notice the problem too late, when the deadly inflammation starts. Such people die of frostbites, heat strokes, blood poisoning, which can be caused with a slight wound; they do not feel any pain even when they have a heart attack.
Ashlyn’s parents say that they are trying to make her think that blood is bad, that she needs to ask for help every time, when she sees her own blood. Doctors do not know, what will happen to the girl when she grows and gives birth to her own child, because she will not be able to feel contractions. The parents have to be highly careful even when they feed Ashlyn: “We can’t leave her alone when she eats. We can’t give her hot meals – she can burn her mouth with them. She can also bite her tongue through,” they say.
Ashlyn Blocker will have to live a very difficult and hazardous life. It may sound like a paradox, but the feeling of pain has become an unfeasible dream for the girl and her parents.
It is worth mentioning that unique, inexplicable phenomena are more common with children rather than adults. There is a ten-year-old boy in China, whose bodily temperature is 43 degrees. The boy is quite healthy; he has never had flu, although any other normal person would die in his place. Another superchild was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The boy is only 15 months old, but he has already made a Guinness Book record with his weight of 26 kilograms. A five-year-old Hamburg resident is as strong as a 15-year-old kid. Another child prodigy lives in Iraq – the boy has not been able to sleep for more than two years. Scientists have never been able to find any explanation to such mysterious phenomena.
Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Dmitry Sudakov)