Giedi is moist and oxygen-rich, near the top of the inhabited worlds in atmospheric oxygen. Upper-class diet is heavy in red meat, especially organ meats. No doubt over generations, natural selection has favored individuals with high iron concentrations in their blood, So everything conspired to mask the presence of Hardison's Disease in the Harkonnens: high hemoglobin; lots of iron in their diet; high atmospheric oxygen But even so, how many of them were mad, and look what happened when one left the homeworld: when Rabban became governor of Arrakis, he moved to a planet with low oxygen, dry atmosphere (which exacerbates the disease), a diet low in iron. He was none too stable before; no doubl his brain had alreadj been damaged by oxygen starvation. But on Arrakis, it must have increased progressively, and he became "Beast Rabban, the Demon Ruler " Sure, he brought his own nasty tendencies to Dune, but much of his excess must have come about because the disease was driving him mad. If this hypothesis is correct, then Jessica had the condition too, and passed it on to her children. But she never spent more than a few years in a row on Arrakis. For some reason, the disease progresses more slowly in women, and melange also retards its effects Nevertheless, a Jessica who would return to the B.G. doesn't sound like my Jessica. Could that have been a symptom? Bul poor Paul! Twenty years on Arrakis, and all the time his brain cells dying! How else could he have launched a jihad killing hundreds of millions? Emperor of the universe, yet all his writings so helpless, so passive. Seer of the future, yet he walks first into the Qizarate trap then into the desert And when he returns, 328 that's not Paul Atreides Rabban's twisted will led his mania to appear as monstrosities of vice, just so Paul s guilt brought his to the surface as an enormity of religious zeal Alia should have been able to resist heavy spice diet from before birth, her sex, the mitigat ing heredity of Duke Leto But the struggle with the Voices must have been continuous, maybe just the loss of a slight edge m her mental capacity was enough to tip the balance in favor of the devils inside Ghamma may have been free of the disease but it hardly matters now What does matter is Leto-he's the one that must be advised The next day Dunean Idaho-13015 was killed He believed that Leto's voices and visions were the phantoms of a deteriorating mind, that the more frequent approaches of "the Worm" were signs of the progress of the disease, and the disclosure cost him his life Given what we know now from his journal entries, and given what remained for him to clear up m the puzzle he worked at so tirelessly, the question that enraged Leto may well have been "Was the Reverend Mother Gams Helen Mohiam the mother of Hastmir Fennng?" Perhaps Leto could have answered it, we cannot WEM Further Reference* Leto R Journal (caUnes by Dunean Who-13015).