It began, as so much begins now, with a title. Not in the outraged, polemical script of Al-Ahram, but in the detached, blue-fount script of an online newsletter of a European science journal: "Analyzing the Jamil Anomaly: Contagious Cure or Directed Evolution? " The article was stodgy, filled with data points and cautious hypotheses, but its conclusion left behind a phrase that stuck in the head.
The author, a German bioethicist, gave the spreading, untamed cluster of healings and mutations the name "The Dawud Effect."
The term was the ideal conveyance. It was scientific enough to suit analysts, simple enough for headlines, and poetic enough for the general population. Within days, it was ubiquitous.
Dawud's first glance of it was on the satellite data-slate, in an aggregate newsfeed. T
