Half man, half tree

There’s a bloke in Indonesia who has a rare immune deficiency: he’s extremely susceptible to the Human Papilloma Virus. It’s not big and it’s not scary because in the rest of us it causes merely warts.

Dede’s problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system, meaning his body is unable to contain the warts.

The virus was therefore able to “hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells”, ordering them to produce massive amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as “cutaneous horns” on his hands and feet.

The Telegraph

The Discovery Channel