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Team:UCLA/HumanPractices
From 2013.igem.org
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<h4>Danny's Story </h4> | <h4>Danny's Story </h4> | ||
| + | IVIS, the medical breakthrough of the 21st century. Hailed, as one of mankind's greatest triumphs. It was supposed to provide complete protection from any disease, virus, bacteria, even cancer and neurodegenerative disease. It would bring us to a new era of prosperity. It became common practice to receive the IVIS vaccination at birth. A completely synthetic immune system. Supposedly a far superior one than the one found naturally in our own bodies. Soon everyone, even babies in third world countries would receive this vaccine. And why not? It was cheap, comparable to a bottle of aspirin. The human immune system, evolved over millions of years, rendered useless in a matter of decades. Evolution stepped in accordingly. Why waste evergy maintaining a process as complex as the immune system when it served no function? By 2090 the aveage white cell count was down 60%. By 2150 no had a white blood cell to speak of. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Looking back, I find it ironic that the isolation we strived for was the very thing that brought the attention of the entire world on us. My name is Jeremiah Catz, I was a member of an isolatioist community of hacidic Jews in the southern tip of South Africa. We were a relatively few. Around 1200 of us. The world we lived in was one of change. With each passing the day the world became a different place. New technologies were being developed at an incredible pace, the technolgies of one year were left entirely obsolete by the developments of the next. In a world like this, where nothing is constant, no one is sure of anything, nothing seems real. You feel as if you are living your life in eternal sleep, just waiting to someday be woken up, always shifting between dreams. When our community formed in the year 2020, it was was founded on the principal that the key to a prosperous and wholesome life could not be found in the world that was growing around it. Instead the community chose to revoke modern technology altogether and build a build a society founded upon the principles of hard work and tradition. None of the technologies we had were invented after 1930, and all our food we farmed and raised ourself. Our community gradually cut off almost all ties with the rest of the world. As a result, IVIS never reached us. We still had the immune system that God gave us. | ||
| + | |||
| + | 2165, the year of the epidemic. Humanities greatest test. No one was immune. The virus was relentless. IVIS had no response. People began dying in droves. The virus attacked the mind first, the victims mental faculties were completely depleted in a matter of days. Death followed shortly after. No one was immune. No one except us. We were different. Maybe it was that we were still human and the rest of the world wasnt. Maybe this was God's way of asserting his will, his way of punishing mankind. I wont say that there wasnt a small sentiment of validation, smugness, maybe even satisfaction within some members of the community when the situation was fully understood. The outside world that we so reproached with their fancy vacuum claners and such was coming crashing down, and we, we were the chosen ones. God had smiled down upon us. At least thats how we saw it at first. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Then everything changed for us. Someone from the outside figured out that we were the solution. Our blood. The immunity, the cure, ran through our veins. Through an injection of just a small amount of of one of our people's blood, immunity could be transferred to another person. One liter of our blood could cure almost a thousand of the afflicted. Like a tidal wave had crashed down on us, our community was forever changed. We were at the center of the world. We had to give our blood to the children, they were the most precious. No, we should give it to the politicians and leaders, they were the ones that could rebuild society. A community once so quiet and isolated, had to make decisions that would affect the future of man. Division started to arrise. We all agreed initially that the community had to act as one. Any decision we made had to be the decision of the group. It would not be so easy. Some advocated selling our precious resource to the highest bidders. The money could sustain us for endless generations to come. Everyone had their own idea of what was right, a different vision of how to shape the future. Humanity was ours for the molding. It was never said, but it was at the back of all of our minds. Until we made a decision, not one drop of our blood would be given to anyone. Then Tevya disappeared. | ||
| + | He was just a boy of 14. No one goes missing in the community. It just did not happen. This had to be something else. Then Job, then Jakob. Then Tsaitl was taken, my own daughter. Fear swallowed all of us. We finally gave in. We surrendered ourselves to the will of the Republic of South Africa in return for protection. | ||
| + | The bombs fell next. The other nations would not sit by and be eradicated. They demanded their own share of our blood. It seemed the greatest war in the history of mankind is about to begin. That is where I find myself. Locked in my cell in South Africa as I hear the bombs fall around me. | ||
Revision as of 19:40, 25 September 2013
Contents |
Crazy Sci Fi Adventure Time
What the hell is this?
Some iGEM projects have very straightforward real world applications. Give an example???? The real world applications of our project, however, is not as readily transparent. Because our project is such a fundamental tool it could potentially be used in a large variety of ways and across many disciplines of science and medicine.. As we were working on the project thoughout the summer we realized that we were beginning to adopt a tunnel vision mindset. We became so focused on the various techinical details of how to jump through the next hoop of the project that we lost sight of what this project meantt to us and the potential that it had.
In order to rectify this problem and de-stress a little, we decided to have a fun team workshop in which me would discuss the potential implications of our project in the distant future. Although slightly fantastic, our team came up with some very creative and entertaining future scenarios. Listed below are the stories we came up with at the workshop. Enjoy!
Stories
Jay's Story
t’s 5 AM, April 15th 2047. It’s been 7 hours since the mock protests gave away to riots, and it’s not letting up. War of the fashions between the Inks and the Bleaks. A pale imitation of racial conflict of the previous century. And I find myself a Bleaker awake in a pile of Inked bodies. The streets look like chess board peppered in blood.
I remember how all of this began. A harmless shock statement to offend the common sensibilities. Starting with decades old viral treatment to sterilize and bleach the teeth as a basis, a group of grad students took it a step further by allowing it to modify genetic and epigenetic elements of the skin and making it open source. In the beginning, many variations of the treatment floated around such as chrome and glow-in-the-dark. Some were carcinogenic; others simply didn’t catch on. Eventually natural selection took course, and only the most popular variations remained: alabaster white or pitch black. In retrospect, I think people liked the monochromatic simplicity.
I chose the color white because my girlfriend was decided to be an Inker. Black and white used to go well together you see.
Naturally, the public was outraged. Accusations were made that we were harboring racial or political agendas. They called us unnatural and accused us of mocking the racial challenges our ancestors had go through. Thinking ourselves clever, we didn’t defend ourselves, we played along. Initially we had Bleaker rights protests and Inker Bleaker marriages. We had no common agenda, we simply wanted to rebel.
I think someone once said as a joke, “we are products of more enlightened times.” She hated the societal hypocrisy. She was young, beautiful, but hated that hypocrisy and cowardice built into the society that made discussion of race impossible over half a century. For her, inking was about protest. For me, it was about the inclusivity. Aggression between two sides was part of the joke, but there was no denying a strange sort of rivalry developing. Egged on by ever critical responses from the media and social networking sites, both sides set out to provoke the nation. If one side had a protest, other side started a riot. When Bleakers had a swimsuit parade, Inkers had nude flash mobs. Each time both sides tried to outdo one another. hat was all part of the greatest in-joke in the world. Wasn’t it? Maybe I’m deluding myself. I have some responsibility for what happened.
I don’t know when the relationship became toxic. Maybe, I saw some preferentialism from other Bleakers: better job offers here, little discounts there. Inkers weren’t happy about the preferential treatment. They felt that we were taking it too far. Of course, most Inkers are known for their crass hedonism in general. Often arrested for outrageous stunts and violence. They were in no position to criticize us.
My legs hurt. I can’t move, or they’ll find me.
It was just another mock-protest. I don’t remember too well what it was about, but there was a couple of picketers with the sign, “God, Save These Wretches”. Couple of Plainskins actually came up to us and started pushing us around. Things like these happened in all riots: idiots projecting their problems to others. Though this time they had real cause to be angry: a security footage of a Bleaker murdering a Plainskinned woman.
She said we should find other people. She didn’t want to be part of the joke no more.
While the offending parties were eventually taken away by the police. Strange mood settled over the crowd. No real accusations, but shift in a glance and suspicious stares. Many thought that crowd would simply disperse. But then someone lit the spark.
Undoing the melanin modification is easy. Like a snake shedding her skin.
I don’t know who started it, but a Bleaker and an Inker started a fight. I heard one of them accused the other, but no one knew who threw the first punch. Cooler heads from both groups tried to separate them. But accusations started flying in from both groups. When looked down from above, all the little black and white dots migrated into solid mass of respective colors.
Police were called in what happened next. But I’m not sure they came, considering I saw not a speck of blue during the whole thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to watch. It was quite a spectacle after all.
This is what I could make out before I blanked out: Inkers accused us of harboring a criminal. Bleakers jeered, saying something about arrest records. Some Inkers tried to grab a random bleach skinned man from the crowd. Bleakers fought back. An idiot with a firearm fumbled with a safety. Accusations stopped as bodies were entangled in the violence. Tide of black and white met in the middle and exploded.
I slammed down the trunk. I may have cried a little, as I drove towards the nearest protest.
My paranoia is unjustified I think. They weren’t going to look for me in a pile of bodies. All the same, I think I’ll stay here. The bleeding in my leg is not stopping.
Underneath the coal black bodies, I look at the aftermath. It’ s gruesome, pointless, and kind of pretty. As I always thought black and white go together. We are the product of the more enlightened times after all.
Danny's Story
IVIS, the medical breakthrough of the 21st century. Hailed, as one of mankind's greatest triumphs. It was supposed to provide complete protection from any disease, virus, bacteria, even cancer and neurodegenerative disease. It would bring us to a new era of prosperity. It became common practice to receive the IVIS vaccination at birth. A completely synthetic immune system. Supposedly a far superior one than the one found naturally in our own bodies. Soon everyone, even babies in third world countries would receive this vaccine. And why not? It was cheap, comparable to a bottle of aspirin. The human immune system, evolved over millions of years, rendered useless in a matter of decades. Evolution stepped in accordingly. Why waste evergy maintaining a process as complex as the immune system when it served no function? By 2090 the aveage white cell count was down 60%. By 2150 no had a white blood cell to speak of.
Looking back, I find it ironic that the isolation we strived for was the very thing that brought the attention of the entire world on us. My name is Jeremiah Catz, I was a member of an isolatioist community of hacidic Jews in the southern tip of South Africa. We were a relatively few. Around 1200 of us. The world we lived in was one of change. With each passing the day the world became a different place. New technologies were being developed at an incredible pace, the technolgies of one year were left entirely obsolete by the developments of the next. In a world like this, where nothing is constant, no one is sure of anything, nothing seems real. You feel as if you are living your life in eternal sleep, just waiting to someday be woken up, always shifting between dreams. When our community formed in the year 2020, it was was founded on the principal that the key to a prosperous and wholesome life could not be found in the world that was growing around it. Instead the community chose to revoke modern technology altogether and build a build a society founded upon the principles of hard work and tradition. None of the technologies we had were invented after 1930, and all our food we farmed and raised ourself. Our community gradually cut off almost all ties with the rest of the world. As a result, IVIS never reached us. We still had the immune system that God gave us.
2165, the year of the epidemic. Humanities greatest test. No one was immune. The virus was relentless. IVIS had no response. People began dying in droves. The virus attacked the mind first, the victims mental faculties were completely depleted in a matter of days. Death followed shortly after. No one was immune. No one except us. We were different. Maybe it was that we were still human and the rest of the world wasnt. Maybe this was God's way of asserting his will, his way of punishing mankind. I wont say that there wasnt a small sentiment of validation, smugness, maybe even satisfaction within some members of the community when the situation was fully understood. The outside world that we so reproached with their fancy vacuum claners and such was coming crashing down, and we, we were the chosen ones. God had smiled down upon us. At least thats how we saw it at first.
Then everything changed for us. Someone from the outside figured out that we were the solution. Our blood. The immunity, the cure, ran through our veins. Through an injection of just a small amount of of one of our people's blood, immunity could be transferred to another person. One liter of our blood could cure almost a thousand of the afflicted. Like a tidal wave had crashed down on us, our community was forever changed. We were at the center of the world. We had to give our blood to the children, they were the most precious. No, we should give it to the politicians and leaders, they were the ones that could rebuild society. A community once so quiet and isolated, had to make decisions that would affect the future of man. Division started to arrise. We all agreed initially that the community had to act as one. Any decision we made had to be the decision of the group. It would not be so easy. Some advocated selling our precious resource to the highest bidders. The money could sustain us for endless generations to come. Everyone had their own idea of what was right, a different vision of how to shape the future. Humanity was ours for the molding. It was never said, but it was at the back of all of our minds. Until we made a decision, not one drop of our blood would be given to anyone. Then Tevya disappeared. He was just a boy of 14. No one goes missing in the community. It just did not happen. This had to be something else. Then Job, then Jakob. Then Tsaitl was taken, my own daughter. Fear swallowed all of us. We finally gave in. We surrendered ourselves to the will of the Republic of South Africa in return for protection. The bombs fell next. The other nations would not sit by and be eradicated. They demanded their own share of our blood. It seemed the greatest war in the history of mankind is about to begin. That is where I find myself. Locked in my cell in South Africa as I hear the bombs fall around me.
