Act I: The Deep Problem
The Silent Destroyer of Nations
When Medicine Reaches Its Limits
In the 1980s, tuberculosis remained humanity's deadliest infectious disease. Even worse, drug-resistant strains began emerging like shadows in a darkening room. Ukraine faced a particular crisis: TB ravaged the poorest communities, and HIV arrived with devastating force.
The problem was simple yet catastrophic: antibiotics alone could not win. A patient's own immune system had surrendered. Damaged lungs harbored billions of bacteria. Chest cavities formed like war-torn cities inside the human body. Without immune help, patients lost weight, coughed blood, and died despite taking every drug doctors prescribed.
Conventional TB treatment required six to eight months of harsh chemotherapy. The drugs poisoned the liver while immunity crumbled. Patients with HIV faced an impossible equation: their CD4 T-cells numbered in the hundreds when ten thousand meant safety. TB bacteria exploited this weakness mercilessly.
Physicians in Ukraine recognized an urgent truth: you cannot chemotherapy your way out of immune failure. Something fundamentally different was required. The immune system needed awakening, not just antibiotic assault. Traditional medicine suggested plants held forgotten answers.
This was the landscape when Volodymyr Pylypchuk began his quest.