MED_A_Hilbert to ALL

[tarakan]

[ it's Dr. Grumpus, bothering everybody about medical crap again! ]

Now that we have two medical officers awake and have recently returned from an alien planet, basic check-ups will be re-implemented. Check-ups will be BASIC: a P-HYMN-1.A scan, check on bracelet, and basic questions. These are mandatory for all crew members. There are only a handful of us, it is small ship, do not make me come and find you.

There is no set schedule for check-ups yet, as the moment I set schedule, it will inevitably have to be changed thanks to an off-planet visit or emotional manipulation from giant space alien or whatever will be thrown at us. Needless to say, after any ship-wide event affecting all or multiple members of the crew, you will at least undergo basic once-over.

As always, feel free to ask myself or Dr. Baizhu for assistance should you develop pains, unexplained symptoms, or deviance from the norm.

I also would like to thank crew members for continued assistance with the quarantine process involved in providing medicine to Captain Drake. Anyone who wishes to join that roster, please reply here.

I hope that is all. Please do not do anything that gives me cause to make shipwide announcement.

Comments

[heartofhealing]

Hm.

[ Baizhu takes a moment to gather his thoughts and go over everything that's... sensitive. ]

I spent some time studying under a doctor that was researching my condition. It's a mutation of a cellular degeneration, causing cell death in the internal organs. The body treats its own cells as hostile, causing an autoimmune reaction and making it difficult to treat by medicine or cellular repair. Even growing new organs do not work, as the cells die rather than divide.

[ A fancy way to say he's full of necrotic tissue on the inside - or was.

He takes out some documents on his CL-10, full of medical studies. Most of them use him as the patient and the doctor, but a few older ones are by another name. ]

It's usually fatal rather quickly once the degeneration starts, so the research has been forced to focus on how to manage the condition - while searching for a way to reverse the error in the cells. I have a few successful studies done, but the cell death returns eventually. I'm trying to create a way for the cellular structure to heal itself despite missing building blocks, which is... well. Complicated. Kind of the 'healing' one sees in movies with magic, my daughter said once - complete reversal of an injury.

[ Baizhu takes his glasses off with a bit of a sigh. ]

Unfortunately, it hasn't gone beyond those short moments of revival, and 'managing' the disease has left me with a rather terrible constitution and a body full of synthetic organs that even they are sometimes damaged by the necrosis inside. Despite the curing of cancer, and ways to quickly heal injuries by cell growth, modern medicine cannot fight a body killing itself like this. Only delay it.

[tarakan]

[ Interesting. Baizhu's disease sounds like something very under the radar—Hilbert certainly hasn't heard of it before now. But trying to find a way to help Baizhu manage his disease could easily help Hilbert's research.

Because he's not trying to cure death. He's trying to find a way to enhance people, to make them more durable, to help them survive whatever horrors the world might throw at them next. Hilbert can't make the planet more habitable. But he can help people survive whatever is thrown at them. ]

I doubt I can help with your overall goal, [ Hilbert muses, ] But I can help get more time. My work has involved synthetic organs. My focus is on genetic modification, helping design synthetic organs to work with the body and survive harsher conditions. People who work in nonviable regions, for example. If their lungs are damaged by toxins in the environment to point that they need replacement, why not give them replacement that can survive what previously killed them?

[ His work has involved synthetic organs. His work has also involved tweaking the genetic code of non synthetic organs, occasionally without his patient's consent. But Hilbert is keeping that to himself for the moment. ]

With your data on condition and my work with genetics, at least we could design organ to better withstand your condition. Modern medicine can only delay condition, but delay of ten years is vastly different than delay of ten days. This could work.

[heartofhealing]

[ Something affecting 0.0000002% of people isn't a lot these days, even with the reclaimed population on Tellus. Especially with such a quick death rate. Hilbert's assistance really is priceless, though, and the green-haired man's normally zen look is more excited than it's been since he first was thawed out.

Curing death is part of survival, isn't it? What need would there be of stronger, enhanced people if cells never died in the first place - instead regenerated themselves? ]

That's very interesting, Dr. Hilbert. I would love to read through your work, it definitely sounds like we would be doing well to combine our research. Ten years is indeed quite the difference from the way the cell death is a problem right now.

[ He taps his head with one finger. ]

I'm lucky the problem doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier or I would have lost my mind to rapid versions of Alzheimers or dementia by now... although I have tried the same cures for those diseases for my own issue, but it doesn't show any viable results.

[tarakan]

[ Hilbert's also radiating excitement, or at least as much excitement as someone as grumpy as him can radiate. This is something new. Something good. He is remarkably happy to launch into some dubious science. ]

I will collate my work [ and remove all the blatantly illegal stuff ] and send it do you. You know your condition best—you know what would be best avenue to start on.

Hopefully, we will have good start to this.

end?

[heartofhealing]

[ Baizhu will do the same! Just... remove any signs of experimenting on himself, or the fact that he gave himself the disease on purpose. ]

Wonderful!

[ He really hasn't felt this excited in a long time, invigorated to start his research up again after years of stagnating. This was exactly what he had hoped for.

All the sacrifices to get to the Mnemosyne were finally paying off. He could find a way to help himself - and Qiqi. ]

works for me!

[tarakan]

I can sense this is start of wonderful partnership, [ he muses.

Well, wonderful or 'horribly unethical.' Still, either option works for Hilbert. ]