On 27 Feb 2016 at 8:00, Timothy Collinson wrote:

> I was thinking about this in relation to some invented disease or
> syndrome (and a couple of other things).  So yes, I would like to
> think that by the 57th century Chronic Fatigue Syndrome will be
> easily curable BUT there will still be *something* <insert fancy
> name> that might have whatever medical or debilitating effect you're
> looking for in a game.  (See the "Skefflig's Syndrome" I put into the
> adventure All in the Genes).

So we understand the complete human genome, and can fix errors at
will. And understand DNA in general well enough to figure out new
critters and design our own.

If we can do that then there will be "my home geneering kit" and
folks can design diseases, etc to order.

Or folks can design viruses to "fix" or "cure" things and and while
they are fine, what happens when two or more get into the same person
may not be.

Great example of that last is Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy.

as part of the background, somebody developed a cure for some forms
of cancer that was a modified version of the Marburg virus ("Marburg
Amberlee"). It was safe it couldn't survive in the wild, the patients
had to be fed some special amino acid or something or it couldn't
reproduce.

A guy named Kellis was working on a cure for the common cold. it was
another virus intended to spread much like colds do. It was still in
the testing stage when some well meaning idiots broke into the lab
and released it into the wild. ("They've got a cure for the cold!
They must be withholding it because of the [fill in conspiracy
theory]").

The Kellis virus *did* cure the common cold. Alas it spread to
someone who was undergoing treatment with the Marburg-Amberlee virus.
Amnd as sometimes happens, the viruses liked each other and sort of
scroo-bred (yes, this does happen).

The result was Kellis-Amberlee.

It still prevented the common cold. And cured some cancers.

But if someone carrying it (ie most of the population) got sufficient
damage, they underwent "viral amplification". Which turned it from a
passive infection to an active one. And for all intents and purposes
turned the body into a zombie.

This results in a zombie apocalypse. The books start around 20 years
*after* that.No, they haven't found a cure. And btw, anyy mammal over
50 pounds can be affected.

That sort of thing could still happen even with the sort of genetic
engineering I described above. Because both virii were fine. It was
an unexpected *interaction* that did the damage. Of course, with that
level of geneering, they could probably whip up a cure fairly fast.
But there'd still be problems.

To paraphrase something someone said a few decades back "The higher
the TL the easier it is for an 'average person' to cause the end of
the world."

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com