Brain-eating amoeba cases spike: NC teen critically ill after Louisiana girl's death

In the waning weeks of summer, two families have been brought face to face with one of nature's most unforgiving truths: that the same warm waters offering refuge from the heat can harbor an invisible and nearly always fatal threat. A North Carolina teenager lies critically ill and a Louisiana child, Lillian Smart, has died — both felled by Naegleria fowleri, a single-celled organism that enters the brain through the nose and kills with terrifying speed. Health officials across the United States are now raising their voices not in panic, but in the quiet urgency that comes from knowing that ra