Challenge #02919-G362: Pass It On
I’d like to know more about Human Gis and her discovery of the flower that helped ease, then cure, her bad cough and helped heal the scar tissue in her lungs. Did the kid get credit for her discovery? Maybe a bonus? And did her companion help her with her self-esteem?
It’s from this story from back in May. https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02685-g128-little-yellow-different – DaniAndShali
It would eventually be named the Rentiniv Daisy, via several miscommunications and some typography errors. By the time things could be corrected, it was already too late. The name was entered and logged into the Alliance Medik dictionaries. It was a small yellow flower and as unremarkable as a dandelion, while being as hardy as Baby’s Breath. It also possessed a scent that, though inoffensive, was distinctive.
Discovered on Rentin IV by Ship’s Human Giselle Barnabus. The medical properties of its perfume and pollen are still being explored. Human Gis gets credit for the propagation information and discovery royalties from every scientist and Medik working on the chemistry of the bloom. The amount they pay is a fraction of the Time Human Gis spent on her own experiments, but that doesn’t matter. The science is happening everywhere, working on how the flower worked its magic and if such a miracle could be replicated by technology.
The Time flows towards a managed account to help support those like Human Gis, who had lingering harm from early editions of the immunoflu. Beta drafts of which were not only wild, but still causing harm in the outlying Human realms. There is little more devastating than a good idea gone bad, and all attempts to wipe it out were ongoing and arduous. Something like the Rentiniv Daisy makes an amazing stopgap. The managed account helps pay for victims of bronchial scarring to acquire daisies of their own. It’s the right thing to do.
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Challenge #02802-G245: The Difficult Choice
Sometimes the deadliest part of a viral infection is not the virus itself, but the immune reaction to the virus. So what happens if an apocalyptic mad-scientist type unleashes a viral pandemic that will cause every deathworlder species he could get his hands on to die because their own immune systems will basically liquefy their lungs, gills, or other oxygen-extracting apparatus, but forgets to take into account that a virus that uses strong immune systems to attack will completely bypass higher-level havenworlders?
For the closest thing to a non-mad-scientist real-world example: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/jan/18/birdflu.medicineandhealth – Anon Guest
[AN: There are so many parallels between the 1918 flu pandemic and the current viral apocalypse going on. Up to and including people believing it wasn’t that bad, snake oil salespeople, and other people refusing to wear their face masks]
When Humans say their immune systems have a “kill or cure” approach, they aren’t kidding. There is something about the most deadly of their diseases that causes the Human body to act against itself. Deadly fevers killing the brain are only one. Swelling in the cerebral cells, destruction of important organ cells, and a little something called a cytokine storm, filling the lungs with defensive fluid.
Disease leaves scars, even when its seemingly harmless. Some lead to permanent disabilities[1]. Many such are invisible to the untrained eye. Such can lay waste to isolated communities.
Welcome to Greater Deregulation Lower South East, where profit is more important than anyone’s life. Here, a plague has been raging for decades. They’re only now asking for help because they’re running out of children to put in the factories. Children who were only in the factories because there were not enough adults to go around.
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Challenge #02739-G182: Do Not Pay Your Heart
This is from this prompt :-)
https://steemit.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02446-f256-do-no-harm
The medic known as Allie had gained quite the reputation. She had managed to save people that everyone else had said were not savable. She’d managed to cure those that were said to be incurable. More than one elite had made it a point to find the station she was working at to bring sick relatives and have her see to them.
But now a choice was being given to her. Several were offering large sums of Time for her to work for them and leave the station. But here at the station, there were hundreds who needed her, many could not pay, of course, but without her they, or a family member, would likely perish. But how to explain it to the wealthy ones who thought such talent was wasted on the poor? – Anon Guest
When one is talented at giving the hopeless hope, giving those without a chance a new chance, or giving those facing their ends a new start, one gets to be known. Medik Allie was both Medik and Lucker, giving her Luck to others so that they could have another chance. Following the Vorax Rescue, the wealthy had noticed.
Galactic Economics tends to prevent obscene wealth accumulation, but the Alliance can’t be everywhere and they can’t stop every loophole. There will always be the kind of person who’s the head of an amount of wealth akin to the body of a swollen tick about to paralyse its victim. The kind of person who, like the tick, are not healthy to have around in large numbers.
Technology can only do so much. Genes can only be cleansed of imperfections so many times. Organs can only be replaced so many times. And, in the era before B'Nar made its technology available[1], only so many times one body could be repaired. Some retreated into techno-sarcophagi, with nanotechnology keeping their brain alive when their body failed. They would pilot humanoid puppets and pay extensive amounts of money to keep their machines alive. Sooner or later, those parasites ran out of profits and fell by the wayside. One did not want to live and die like that.
[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit peakd (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]
Challenge #02481-F291: Complete Medical Intervention
It may be only 2% of our body mass, but for every cell we have in our body there ten of them. Bacteria are relatively harmless for the most parts. They help digest food, strengthen our immune system, and could kill us if escape from ours guts. – Anon Guest
Humans are, for the most part, completely unaware that they exist in a state of symbiosis. If asked, most of them would mention their mitochondria, a symbiote so involved that it has become part of almost every cell in their bodies. They do not consider their own bacterial ecology.
They have no idea, or most of them don’t, that their bacteria are so important to the proper functioning of their bodies that changing the ecology inside their own digestive system changes the course of their health. In fact, many deny that this is the case, claiming that their bodily systems are completely isolated from each other.
Hollistic medicine - which examines the whole patient instead of one of their systems - has been anathema to enormous swathes of Human medicine. Including a great many patients. The opposition to such often borders on superstition. Therefore, dealing with many Colonial-Origin Humans can be… educational for the attending Medik.
[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit steemit (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]
One Nutter Saves the World: Adequate Medical Care
In this episode… I destroy the for-profit medical industry
