With tear-filled eyes and passionate voices, nurses and doctors at Rady Children’s Hospital appear on a projection screen in Biola’s production center describing the emotional encounters they’ve had with patients diagnosed with the highly contagious bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA).

Biolans, freshman Jacob Davis, senior Brandon Marx, sophomore Jamie Krumland, and junior Justin Gum, gathered Sunday afternoon to run through the interviews they shot last weekend at the San Diego hospital.

Having heard about MRSA a few years ago from his aunt Nan Black, a research nurse at Rady, Davis knew he wanted to do something to raise awareness and funds for the disease, and coming to Biola brought up a timely opportunity.

“Film,” Davis said, “is the most powerful form of communication.”

“Jake sent out a mass email to the Cinema and Media Arts department saying he wanted to shoot a documentary,” Marx said. “Only two out of 140 people responded — me and Jamie. It had to be God because I usually overlook projects like this.” Gum later signed on as a video editor, but didn’t attend the filming.

The footage is emotional. B-rolls of empty hospital beds and breathing tubes emphasize the seriousness of the bacteria. People are dying and hardly anyone knows about it.

That thought is what drives these four students to get their documentary out. They want to make MRSA known — and more importantly they want to get aid.

So what exactly is MRSA? According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MRSA is a drug-resistant staph infection caused most commonly by staph entering an open wound. About one-third of people coexist with staph — which can be cured with antibiotics — on their skin without any problems, while about one percent of people coexist with MRSA. Severe MRSA infections occurred in approximately 94,000 persons in 2005 and were associated with approximately 19,000 deaths that year, according to the CDC.

Though rare, Community-Associated MRSA can develop into more severe infections, such as bloodstream infections or pneumonia, and is particularly dangerous for children, according to the CDC. Davis said that 250 children have died to date because of a severe MRSA infection.

Rady Children’s Hospital has seen several of these rare, severe cases of MRSA. The impact of hearing these children die abruptly (most within days, even hours) from MRSA has caused Davis to respond. He’s hoping to help raise the $3.8 million needed to fund research.

Back at Biola, the screen blares the image of a nurse distraught over the lack of knowledge they have with MRSA. “It’s 2009 and we don’t have an effective antibiotic to cure a staph infection,” the nurse says. “You have to look a parent in the eye and tell them there’s nothing else we can do. They beg you to do something, anything.”

“They have everything state-of-the-art and none of it works. They say MRSA just laughs at them,” Davis said.

Davis, Marx, Krumland and Gum are still in the early stages of editing; still figuring out which scenes to cut and which to keep for the video that will be shown in chapel next month. They need to get all the footage down to about 4 minutes, although it might have to be shorter, considering chapel video restrictions. They want to do an extended version as well to show doctors and anyone else who is interested in more information. Davis wants to present it to as many churches as possible.

Sunday afternoon Davis, Marx, Krumland, and Gum discuss each rough cut of an interview, scene by scene, commenting on the quotes they like and the shots that best convey the urgency of the situation.

“18,000 people died in 2005 … and it’s gone way up since then. Within the last decade it’s really taken off. It keeps escalating,” Davis said.

“It’s more deadly, more lethal than swine flu or any other epidemic,” Marx said.

MRSA caused more deaths in the U.S. in 2005 than AIDS which claimed 16,000 victims, according to the National Institute of Health.

Krumland hopes Biola will respond by doing what they can to help even if it’s just a little.

“You can’t underestimate the power of prayer to convince the doctors (to take up research) and comfort the families that lose their kids to it,” Krumland said.

In the midst of the chaotic editing process, fundraising is still a priority and Davis, Marx, Krumland, and Gum have all fit a MRSA benefit walk on Oct. 3 at San Diego’s Sea World into their tight schedules. They’ve each stressed how vital it is to get more Biola students to come down to this event as well.

The film isn’t ready yet, but MRSA, they’ve made clear, needs to get attention.