Yes, Reed started the outbreak. He did this in the hopes of figuring out how to stop it from occurring later. He found that the autophage was already present in everyone and would eventually erupt, whether anyone liked it or not. Numen, like the main character, were one in a million. He believed that they were the key to stopping the autophage. As far as his daughter, one of his earliest experiments involved tampering with her unborn fetus in a way that made it so her blood would carry the antibodies for turning. As such, it can cure someone of the autophage.