Filed under: Alzheimer's, Flu, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Science, Science Fiction, Society
Research has established one component of the world-wide epidemic of obesity: a virus.
A common virus that causes colds can be a factor in obesity, according to a study released Monday offering further evidence that a weight problem may be contagious.
The adenovirus-36 (Ad 36) has already been implicated as the cause of weight gain in animals, but with this study researchers showed for the first time that it can also cause humans to pile on the pounds.
The findings could accelerate the development of a vaccine or an antiviral medication to help fight the battle of the bulge alongside diet and exercise.
It’s a slow-moving, slow-acting plague. This would go a long ways to explaining why obesity has become so wide-spread in the last few decades, and has been hinted at in previous studies. There are other factors, certainly, but establishing a tie to a viral component could be a huge factor in dealing with this problem more effectively.
I’m overweight by about 40 pounds. Partly this is a function of my lifestyle, with the lack of opportunity to be active and the additional stress of being a full-time care provider for someone with Alzheimer’s. I know that with a lot of effort in exercise and watching what I eat, I can shake off the excess pounds – I’ve done it a couple of times. But it is so much harder now than it was before, and my natural weight-point has changed from where it used to be a decade ago to where it is now. And this pattern is seen increasingly around the globe, where other factors at play in my life or in the typical American life can be eliminated.
In Communion I have a post-pandemic society, one which is recovering from a massive disruption caused by a flu virus which caused rapid death in a large percentage of the population. But the reality of what we’re dealing with might be even more insidious.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Faith healing, Flu, Health, Pandemic, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
As I mention in the post below, one of the technical weaknesses of the novel is in the biology behind Ling’s genetic make-up and what happens when people come in contact with the alien artifact.
[Spoilers ahead].
This is largely due to my own lack of a solid background in biology, so I would not be in the slightest bit surprised to discover that I made some errors in the ‘explanation’ in the book about how genetic manipulation was used to reach back into the human genome’s history and pull out some traits which are no longer apparent in modern humans.
Then again, such things as residual genetic coding manifesting in oddball body structures are not really that rare, as this recent article in Discover demonstrates. From the article:
Nearly a century and a quarter after Darwin’s death, science still can’t offer a full explanation for why one outdated anatomic trait lingers in the gene pool and another goes. Modern genomics research has revealed that our DNA carries broken genes for things that seem as though they might be useful, like odor receptors for a bloodhound’s sense of smell or enzymes that once enabled us to make our own vitamin C. In a few million years, humans may very well have shed a few more odd features.
In reading this article yesterday, I was surprised not by the amount of useless genetic information remains in our genome, but just how prevalent the actual expression of such material is in humans. There are substantial variations in the human body in terms of who has what kinds of left-over ‘useless’ body parts:
PLANTARIS MUSCLE
Often mistaken for a nerve by freshman medical students, the muscle was useful to other primates for grasping with their feet. It has disappeared altogether in 9 percent of the population.
THIRTEENTH RIB
Our closest cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, have an extra set of ribs. Most of us have 12, but 8 percent of adults have the extras.
***
PYRAMIDALIS MUSCLE
More than 20 percent of us lack this tiny, triangular pouchlike muscle that attaches to the pubic bone. It may be a relic from pouched marsupials.
A personal aside: I was born with an extra toe (complete with additional metatarsal structures) on my left foot. This was likely due to some small hiccup in my embryonic development rather than either a mutation or the expression of residual genetic material. Nonetheless, it still gets interest from any doctor, and was one of the reasons for my assumption that there is greater ‘uniformity’ between human body structures that there actually is.
So, when you read that part of the book, cut me a little slack – maybe there really is something lurking in the “junk” of our DNA which would allow for Ling’s psychic abilities…something which the artifact could ‘activate’, allowing humankind to have the ability for psychic/faith healing.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Science Fiction, Society, Wired, Writing stuff
In this post from last week, I talked about the relevant issues confronting us with pandemic threats such as the bubonic plague. Well, as you may have heard over the last day or so, public health authorities have acted to impose quarantine restrictions on a man with a drug-resistant form of TB. He’s now being treated with antibiotics as the authorities try and back-track his recent trip to Europe and see who he may have exposed to this particularly nasty strain of the disease.
In my early thinking about the ‘fire-flu’ which forms the back-story of Communion, I was intending on it being a strain of influenza which had developed resistance to early anti-viral treatments. I thought I’d have a series of serious but not pandemic flu strains weaken the global economy, and then have a really nasty one hit that was drug resistant. But so few people understand about the problems presented by widespread and inappropriate antibiotic use, that I gave on on that mechanism, figuring that it would just take too much explanation. Going with the ‘weaponized’ form of flu gave me some additional plot devices to work with, as becomes clear when you read the book.
But that doesn’t mean that the threat isn’t real. In fact, the reaction of the public health authorities is telling, I think. They know that having a nasty, drug-resistant form of TB widely spread by someone this way is a very serious threat, and could easily present a huge problem, and turn back the public-health clock 100 years.
Charming.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society
We, as a species, have already experienced pandemics countless times. And we have seen pandemics alter or almost wipe out entire advanced civilizations many times in recorded history. There’s the impact of the Black Death in Europe during the 14th century, which killed off about one-third of the population and arguably lead to the destruction of the feudal system. And the collapse of native American culture due to smallpox being introduced to a vulnerable population. And to a greatly lesser extent, but closer to our own society, is the Spanish Flu of 1918, which I used as a starting point for considering the potential of the fire-flu in Communion of Dreams.
Via today’s Rude Pundit, comes word of the advent of our old friend, the plague – this time occuring in squirrels and monkeys in Denver:
The point here is not that the plague is “back” or any such shit. We know that it never goes away in America, especially out on the flea-ridden varmints of the West. But there’s a reason that Spanky’s story is getting more play than the fact that New Mexico had its first plague case this year, a man who got it from, of course, a flea bite. It’s because as long as the plague stays rural, it’s distant, it’s not a cause of concern to the majority of us who stay esconced in our cities. But if Denver’s puss-squirting squirrels are dropping like flies and killing the zoo monkeys, well, shit, all of a sudden the plague is very fuckin’ real. And Colorado’s gotta do something about it before some white child gets it.
I mention this for several reasons. One, I just like the Rude Pundit’s blog. Two, he’s right about the plague never really going away – it is endemic among several animal populations, which function as a disease reservior (and a great place for mutations to occur). Three, he highlights the fundamental problem: we ignore the threat until it suddenly shows up on our doorstep.
And then it is potentially too late. Yeah, modern antibiotics can treat most forms of the plague known. But all it takes is one nasty mutation, and we may well be left defenseless against this old enemy. In fact, I considered using the Bubonic Plague just that way, rather than going with the “fire-flu”. But even in a worst case scenario, plague would still likely respond to broad-spectrum antibiotics. I decided for my book to go with something viral, since modern medicine has many fewer tools to cope with such a threat.
Besides, in the event of a pandemic such as I stipulate for Communion‘s history, we will undoubtably see the re-emergence of many different secondary epidemics, as the infrastructure of our highly interdependent society grinds to a halt. Charming thought, eh?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Diane Rehm, Flu, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Pandemic, Predictions, Reproduction, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
There was a very interesting segment on the Diane Rehm show this morning about how reproductive science has advanced considerably in the last few decades, and the impact that is having on both individuals and society. In the course of the discussion, the participants touched on a number of issues both of interest to me personally, and pertaining to Communion of Dreams.
In this post in March, I discussed the genetic disease which runs in my family, and how that helped inform my decision not to have children. At the time I entered the normal child-rearing years, the appropriate testing wasn’t available. Now it is. And while I could still make the decision to have children, my wife and I are content without those additional responsibilities.
Anyway, in the course of the discussion on Diane Rehm’s show, there was mention of the fact that couples seeking IVF treatment have the option to perform genetic testing on the individual embryos produced by the procedure, and could then select which embryos to have implanted with the hope that they would quicken and grow. Huxley’s Brave New World is potentially here with this level of scrutiny and selection.
So, what about Communion? In it, I stipulate a history of a pandemic influenza, which kills hundreds of millions, and leaves most of the surviving population sterile. But here I left off from my usual attention to scientific detail, in not specifying exactly what the mechanism in effect was. Because, knowing full well the potential that modern medical science has to offer, I thought it might be a simple answer to just have non-sterile couples producing lots of viable embryos using current IVF tech, and then have those embryos implanted in host mothers, thereby circumventing the threat of human extinction. Like the parents who can now pick and choose which embryo has the greatest potential for survival, I made my own selection of what plot mechanisms were most viable. (Please note, I am not trying to equate the two!)
This is something that all writers have to do: make decisions on what to include, what to exclude. Science fiction writers have to do more of it, since in theory you can decided to invent just about any new technology or science to suit your purpose. But for me, I try to establish a given technological level, and see what makes sense within those constraints. According to most who have read the book and responded to me (either in person or in comments here), I did a pretty fair job in resolving most of the issues. But I know that in this particular case, I pulled a little sleight of hand, and my own sense of honesty pushes me to acknowledge it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, Government, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
[Mild spoiler alert.]
Pandemic flu is at the heart of my novel Communion of Dreams. It is the ‘history’ of the novel, which has shaped the society of 2052 (the setting of the book). And it turns out to be the threat faced by the characters again in the latter third of the book. I won’t go into further detail, in case you haven’t read the book and would like to see how that all plays out.
When I first started formulating the novel, I immediately turned to the model of the 1918 flu pandemic to give me some idea of how I had to cope with the impacts that a renewed pandemic would have on our society. Since then, there have been additional pandemic scares crop up which have allowed me to see new aspects of this (and which, I am convinced, would make the book potentially a best seller, if it was allowed to escape the ‘sci-fi ghetto’). Why? Because pretty much everyone is slowly becoming convinced that we’re due for another pandemic, perhaps a really bad one.
And that fear has public-health officials nervous. Because they know that managing fear during a pandemic will be difficult. One example of this is the current research into whether conventional face masks would be effective or counter-productive in the event of a flu epidemic, and the recently announced guidelines from the CDC about who should wear masks, when.
While I worked in an abulatory surgical center during grad school, I had to wear a surgical mask at all times. You get used to it. And it does help control certain behaviours which can lead to the spread of disease (sneezing, absent-mindedly touching your nose or mouth, et cetera). But masks are not a panacea, and if used improperly or with a false sense of the protection they provide, could actually make matters worse on a societal scale.
It’ll be interesting, from an intellectual standpoint, to see how this plays out. Because I do expect a pandemic flu ‘event’ to happen within my lifetime. Not that I particularly want to actually have to experience it, mind. Mostly, I just hope that I have my book published before it hits, so people don’t think that I am just playing off of the fear and grief of recent history…
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 