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Log Entry #33: The Cures
🕑 Added 2020-08-19 10:11:52 +0000 UTCNo matter how much I know, and the amount of knowledge I absorb, I am still amazed at certain aspects of this world. That goes double if you look into the micro world. There you can bear witness to the infinite complexity of life itself and a universe that cannot be seen by our bare eyes. Still, that particular universe has a profound influence on our very existence.
It is a popular belief that humans are masters of this world, which may not be true.
In my opinion, viruses and bacteria are true rulers; they have populated every corner of the world, and their rule is supreme. You may disagree on the grounds that they have no thinking ability, but from a colonization point of view, that is not so important. They hold this planet in their clutches and have no intention to ever let it go. Besides, they would be incalculably harder to exterminate than the entire human race.
Let me explain a few things about those two, which are so inseparable from our daily lives.
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms that thrive in many different types of environments. Varieties of them can survive in extremes of cold or heat, in places where humans would perish in a short amount of time. Some of them are intrinsic to our very survival since a bunch of them achieved a symbiotic relationship with our bodies and made their home in people’s intestines, helping us digest food and aiding our immune system. Furthermore, the total bacteria mass in an average human represents about 0.3% of the overall body weight. Now, that is something to think about.
Most bacteria cause no harm to people, and they are used for baking, brewing, making cheese, and butter manufacturing… there are infinite usages for those nifty single-cell organisms. Most importantly, without bacteria, there would not be any beer… the horror.
There are exceptions to this and a few bad boys of the Bacteria Empire cause such infections as strep throat, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections, typhoid fever, syphilis, and leprosy. That list continues for a while and is quite extensive, but what can you do, life is a battle for survival on every level.
Crafty humans created weapons to fight these attacks, called antibiotics. (I am sure you took your share of them during your life.) They do kill the bad bacteria, but not all of them. There are survivors, which follow the ancient rule of “what does not kill me makes me stronger.”
The next time you are popping that pill for something minor, you may be 'aiding and abetting the enemy'. Inappropriate use of antibiotics has helped over time create bacterial diseases that are resistant to treatment with several types of antibiotic medications.
On the other side of the battlefield are viruses, and they are microscopic parasites, generally much smaller than bacteria. While bacteria can grow pretty much anywhere, the viruses lack the capacity to thrive and reproduce outside of a host body.
When a virus attacks your system, it invades some of the cells and takes over the cell machinery, redirecting it to produce the virus. They cause diseases such as common colds, chickenpox, influenza, measles, AIDS, Ebola… another very long list. While antibiotic drugs usually kill bacteria, they are not effective against viruses. So, think about it the next time you decide to self-medicate; trying to kill viruses with antibiotic drugs is like trying to drown a fish in the water.
They are the smallest and simplest life form known; ten to a hundred times smaller than bacteria. Nevertheless, this is the case where quantity is quality on its own. Hundreds of millions of viruses can be found in one square foot; the same space holds just tens of millions of bacteria. And while there are some useful bacteria, all viruses are harmful.
All right, that may be an oversimplification, since they do inject their own DNA into the host; sometimes those new genes are useful to the host and become part of its genome. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that up to 8% of the human genome consists of endogenous retrovirus DNA. Nowadays, scientists are using that infiltrating ability of theirs to create different kinds of gene therapies, that will eventually be beneficial to people. It turned out that there is a specific kind of virus called a bacteriophage, and it attacks bacteria. Some of the cutting-edge human research is considering using them to attack those super bacteria we created by wanton use of antibiotics. Isn't it a funny world, we are using one of the things that are the cause of countless deaths to kill other things which are bringing us harm… Cesar would be proud.
There you have it; it is a battlefield that has several participants, and all of them are instinctively fighting for supremacy. Some of the other players are Fungi, Prions, Algae, and a few other parasites. However, they are all in a minor league compared to the heavy hitters.
Why did I bore you with all this scientific explanation about the microscopic world that surrounds you? Well, I decided to join the fight against these foes. It wasn’t my idea initially, but a consequence of doing a good deed.
During my browsing of dark corners of the World Wide Web, I found out one interesting fact. (That particular ‘interesting’, I wrote with an extremely negative connotation. Enough to do some nasty things to the boards of directors of several pharmaceutical companies.)
It seemed that medical research in several areas was intentionally slowed for decades. The reasoning behind it was truly villainous. Why cure someone completely when you can milk them for all they are worth by giving him or her something that will remove the symptoms but leave the main problem.
Moreover, researchers who were trying to make cures were discredited, their grants canceled, and in several cases, they and their families threatened, just so they wouldn’t continue the research they were involved in. Therefore, I urged Dad to start recruiting them, and very soon, they started arriving on Pagan island with their families. At first, they were a little wary about the situation they found themselves in, especially when they saw the technology that was present on the island. However, that changed once they realized that they had access to a supercomputer that could cut decades of research by doing virtual simulations of cause and effect of thousands of chemical and biological compounds.
The results were astounding; Doctors and medical researchers (we had on the island), banded together and decided to do some good for the world. It was our plan from the start, but Michael was not medically inclined, and I had rather specialized knowledge I picked up when I needed to do the upgrades. In a short time, they had the cures or remedies for several previously incurable diseases that had plagued humanity for centuries.
It is almost a failing in our species, our blind faith in authority and lawmakers. So many great minds were ridiculed through history for they had ideas and theories which conflicted with scientific dogma. That arrogant attitude is greatly expressed in the medical community, the way they hold to some of their practices reminds me of some religions where established knowledge is almost impossible to disprove. Don’t forget that some of those medical experts were until recently shocking people’s brains with electricity to… help them? There are more horror stories within that profession than any other.
We did not want to wait for the FDA to spend years to approve our medicines. They worked and were tested extensively within the virtual space. If that sounds too irresponsible to you… tough luck, you need a broader vision.
Technology has advanced far beyond the average human pace of accepting new developments. It is not my fault most people still need to put their hand into the fire to accept the fact that it will burn them. Biological interactions are something that is predictable if you have enough data, and I had more than I needed to accurately determine when something would hurt a human body or kill it.
In a way, it felt a bit backward, finding the cures for things the AutoDoc could easily fix, but a few implications of that technology released into the wild had devastating consequences.
Did the pharmaceutical cartels accept new medicines? Of course not, they were practically livid. As any drug dealer who suddenly felt someone was trying to snatch his customers, they went on an offensive. We were threatening their multi-billion-dollar industry, which was based on treating the symptoms and not dealing with the cause. They started a smear campaign that would put some politicians to shame. At one point, they even started asking questions about how people can trust anything that was given away for free. (Which just put a spotlight on the predatory mindset of a consumer society.)
And we did, give everything away for free. Placed everything on the Internet, together with our findings and the recipes for new medicines so every country could make them.
One would think that would have been enough, but no such luck. People needed help now, and everyone was stalling due to extensive testing they wanted to conduct. Except for the Chinese, they climbed on the bandwagon in no time and started producing drugs and selling them at insane prices.
I cannot blame them really; they saw a golden opportunity and decided to capitalize on it. However, that went against the spirit in which those discoveries were made free. And people will pay any amount of money if their lives depend on it. Since that would undermine what we were trying to achieve, I assigned a good percentage of our nano-factories production to make the medications ourselves, and then redistribute them using several organizations that were only concerned with helping the sick, not making a profit.
It worked like a charm, and the Chinese were left with millions of medicines that nobody was buying, and had to lower their prices to at cost, just to recover their investment.
Transporters carried our shipments to most affected areas, Africa being one of the hot spots for several widespread viral epidemics. I couldn’t go myself, but I had seen the looks of hope in people’s eyes when they received a new lease on life, and that look was multiplied by a thousand when their children received cures.
These were only a few diseases we concentrated on; there are innumerable ones in nature that are still a threat. Our researchers are continuing their work, and in time, we may see Earth that is free of sickness; that is something to strive for.
Of course, by that time… we will not be here.
Comments
0xFFF1
If I was in Max's place, I'd do some gene-editing of my population of humans. First off, I would change the instinctual human to human interactions such that being violent, and especially killing another human would be an alien concept. Instead, if an accord cannot be achieved by any other method, the last resort would be a dominance contest through sexual intercourse. I would change our prolicivities to be much closer to bonobos. I would keep our interactions with other species to be unchanged, so that we can do a proper risk/reward assessment against aliens. Those imperial enough that they threaten humanity will be properly fought against, and those that want peaceful cooperation will get it. I will improve our sexual organs such that they can properly handle any alien biology and produce viable and fertile hybrid offspring, and do so more quickly, comfortably, etc. Our increased libido from human to human interactions will extend to fucking aliens, and humanity will proliferate even in territories that it doesn't have overt control, making the galaxy more and more human. When possible, The Space-Quiverfull strategy is even better than regular military imperialism because they will love the sex instead of hate the oppression, and yet we'll influence and take over their governments all the same by having their demographics become more and more human and human hybrid as we outbreed them with our improved genetics and insatiable libido. Max could even keep it to himself that that was the underlying strategy, no need for that PR disaster by outing himself, just give some generic peace and love platitudes.
