David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

around, playing football, and I was going
to put them in the hospital again and
make them sick again. No platelets. No
white cells. Hemorrhage. Infection.”
VAMP wiped out the children’s immune
system. They were defenseless. For their
parents, it was agony. In order to have a
chance at life—they were told—their
child had to be brought savagely and
repeatedly to the brink of death.
Freireich threw himself into the task,
using every ounce of his energy and
audacity to keep his patients alive. In
those days, when a patient developed a
fever, the physician took a blood culture,
and when the results came back, the
doctor matched the infection with the
most appropriate antibiotic. Antibiotics