Friday, May 31, 2013

The New Killer Diseases

After a certain point when we become seriously sick, we usually just put all our hope in the ones that wear the white coats, the doctors. The scary truth is sometimes the white coats are just as helpless as us when it comes to treating certain diseases, such as the flesh eating bacteria in Jeannie Brown's case. I could only imagine the disappointment of her doctor when she realized there was nothing else her team of doctors and nurses or herself could do to save Jeannie. At that point the doctors and nurses become just as helpless as the rest of us, just hoping that the drugs being administered are enough to combat the raging viruses or bacteria that try to destroy our bodies slowly or swiftly. With their level of intelligence in the medical field, they also receive the burden of knowing the truth, which is not always a great outcome, especially in a situation where a patient has a disease that is new or foreign and there is not much treatment for it. Even then if a patient does survive from one of these new deadly pathogens, as one of the doctors said, there is no standard medical procedure for how to follow up with these patients. It falls on the doctor to use their own judgement on how to go about with the aftermath of the disease with the treated patient. 

Then there are the terrible individuals or sometimes governments that are the exact opposite of doctors in terms of their goals because they are trying to harm and kill as many individuals as they can. While technology is great, it all depends on the user on whether or not it becomes good or bad. Researchers and terrorists have the ability to genetically modify and, as proven by Stony Brook, create a new virus from scratch. For the government to fight against this bioterrorism, it almost seems impossible, but at least with vaccines and having a watch list for certain diseases, there are some methods that could help stop these attacks. What makes the subject even more scary is certain countries, including the U.S.A., have harvested certain deadly pathogens for use in biological warfare, which could result in hundreds to thousands on innocent individuals being killed depending on the pathogen. 

5 comments:

Ben U said...

It's truly terrifying to know that and terrorist group or hostile country advanced enough these days can release a deadly pathogen into populations without warning. Do we have any sort of defense against these viruses besides vaccines and drugs, or are we all totally screwed once they at some point become resistant to all of these?

Sandeep Bindra said...

Ben, drugs and vaccines are pretty much all modern medicine has, besides the old school method that has been around which is quarantining the sick, but then some might argue the government is violating personal freedoms. At that point we have to ask ourselves if it is worth it because some pathogens could easily just spread through the population.

Ben U said...

So, eventually we are all screwed and will end up referring back to darwinian survival of the fittest huh?

Ben U said...

Apperently this is a different email that also works, obviouslty this is ben, but if it still says my name is "spinach" then I'm sorry goldberg. It wouldn't let me change it.

Nick Delehanty said...

Bio-terrorism is handled a lot like nuclear weapons from the governmental and political side, with the whole idea of force parity and only keeping stocks for defensive purposes. Unfortunately because of the "defensive" nature of biological weapons, it is virtually impossible to have nations disarm their bio weapons programs any time soon. Even if it's not true, the perception is that if you don't have a bio-weapons program, you're vulnerable to an attack, when it sounds like you're always vulnerable to an attack regardless according to your post Sandeep. Is having a bio-weapons program really just an illusion of security considering that an attack would presumably be massively devastating considering the limited infrastructure (number of doctors, hospital preparedness, etc...) for such an attack?
I really enjoyed this post. I love the confluence of government and science.