La Paz is the key point of contact between the Bolivian jungle expedition and the later investigation that leads to Project NOAH. It is both a practical gateway into the expedition’s remote field site and the city from which doctors first report four terminally ill travelers whose cancers have disappeared after exposure to something in the jungle. The city’s importance lies less in events unfolding within it than in the chain of evidence and ambition that passes through it.

Gateway to the Jungle

The expedition reaches La Paz after a sixteen-hour flight. From there, its members continue on a smaller government transport to Concepción, in Bolivia’s eastern jungle basin; with no dependable roads beyond that point, the team expects to travel on foot. La Paz is thus a staging point between organized scientific travel and the inaccessible backcountry where the expedition hopes to investigate an unexplained phenomenon.

The roster expands in La Paz. Tim Fanning, from Columbia, joins the group, as does Claudia Swenson from MIT. Fanning brings six graduate assistants, shifting the team’s age and gender balance. The growing expedition reflects the resources and coordination available through the military research establishment, even as its destination remains a remote region that cannot readily be reached by road.

The Report from La Paz

Years later, Colonel Sykes recounts to Bradford J. Wolgast a report that had reached the Centers for Disease Control from a doctor in La Paz. The doctor had four American patients with symptoms resembling hantavirus after an ecotour deep in the jungle. The travelers said they had belonged to a group of fourteen, become separated from the others, and wandered for weeks before finding a remote trading post run by Franciscan friars, who arranged their transport to La Paz.

The patients’ pre-existing illnesses made the report remarkable. One had an inoperable brain tumor, two had acute lymphocytic leukemia, and the fourth had ovarian cancer. All four recovered—not only from the apparent infection, but also from their cancers, which left no trace. The CDC could not identify what they had encountered, or determine whether it came from food, water, or another exposure in the jungle. The travelers themselves could not say exactly where they had been.

From Medical Mystery to Project NOAH

The recoveries did not amount to a safe or lasting cure. All four patients died, and the longest survived only eighty-six days; their deaths were attributed to events including cerebral aneurysm, heart attack, and stroke. The remaining members of the tour group disappeared without a trace, as did the tour operator, whose work Sykes says may have concealed drug smuggling.

For Sykes, the La Paz report points beyond the treatment of any single disease. He presents the apparent interaction between the patients’ immune systems and an unknown, probably viral exposure as a possible route toward preventing a wide range of illnesses. That prospect leads him to argue that human test subjects are necessary and to enlist Wolgast to obtain them. La Paz therefore marks the passage from an unexplained field observation to a research program willing to impose extreme human costs in pursuit of its promise.