Universal Medication: Pros, Cons, and Personal Opinions

[Guest-3]

Hello, all! I recently came up with an idea to start researching regenerative supplements and plants with regenerative properties in trying to come up with research to figure out if a universal medication is possible in the near future. Of course, the demo version would not necessarily be able to heal all ailments. My colleagues and I would most likely start with two simple viruses, Avian Flu and Tonsillitis for example.
What are your opinions on a universal medication? Are there any pros or cons you are uncomfortable with? My colleagues and I would love to see your response.

 

[Dio]

I don't think there will be a universal medication. As nice as it would be to pop a pill that would cure any ailments, there is nothing that is so broad spectrum and any such pill would have to contain compounds to fight diseases the person didn't even have.

Rather than a pill I think Nanomachines are likely to be the future. Ones that can detect and fight infections.

 

[Jamie]

i see nothing wrong with it, but it seems unlikely. i agree with @Deus on nanomachines which we are already working towards

 

[Mipha]

I doubt it would be possible for it to fight every ailment, not to mention the fact that it would be pumping all sorts of other stuff into you in order to fight various other things you don't even have and that would probably cause a lot of negative side effects.

Cool idea, though.

 

[Guest-3]

I don't think there will be a universal medication. As nice as it would be to pop a pill that would cure any ailments, there is nothing that is so broad spectrum and any such pill would have to contain compounds to fight diseases the person didn't even have.

Rather than a pill I think Nanomachines are likely to be the future. Ones that can detect and fight infections.

The only issue with nanomachines it that they are robotic and would be considered "bacteria" in the body. In other words, the body's white blood cells would create cacoon like structures around the nanotech, hindering it from doing its job and relatively rendering them useless.

 

[Kylo Ken]

I think Nanomachines are likely to be the future.

 

[Dio]

I was thinking of him when I was writing my reply!

 

[Dio]

The only issue with nanomachines it that they are robotic and would be considered "bacteria" in the body. In other words, the body's white blood cells would create cacoon like structures around the nanotech, hindering it from doing its job and relatively rendering them useless.

They could attach the individuals antigens on to their nanomachines so the body does not consider them foreign.

 

[Guest-3]

They could attach the individuals antigens on to their nanomachines so the body does not consider them foreign.

Do you mean splicing the nanotech with with the antigens? I just feel that there are too many things that could go wrong with nanotech. :-/

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

Sure, but the pill would be the size of a brick


Also don't diseases mutate and resist for pills like this? It would kind of make your work all for naught in the long run wouldn't it?

 

[el :BeoWolf:]

I think a single pill that could cure everything would be impossible. Diseases vary so much, and they can mutate over time. Such variation probably couldn't be handled with one pill. I'd also have to say nano machines are the more likely outcome.

 

[Emma]

This isn't possible. The human body is too complex for any one combination of chemicals to fix everything that could be wrong with it. The more you add to a medication, the more that can go wrong with it. We already have a massive amount of negative side effects. Those side effects increase exponentially the more conditions you try to fix with just one pill. This is why your doctor always asks you what you are taking. There are complicated databases that track interactions between meds to highlight dangerous combinations but even that sometimes doesn't work.

For you to get anything like this, it's simply not going to be possible with any kind of chemical or enzyme, whatever. None of it would work. The only technology we could develop in the future that could conceivably do something like this is nanite technology. That is, microscopic robots that are small enough to operate inside your body and directly attack viruses, bacteria, cancer cells, whatever is going wrong. They can be programmable so they can deal with any situation. It's the only thing we're going to be able to make that could do anything like this. There's absolutely no way a virus or bacteria will be able to mutate to adapt to this. We can very easily keep it ahead of anything they try.

 

[Dio]

Do you mean splicing the nanotech with with the antigens? I just feel that there are too many things that could go wrong with nanotech. :-/

The nanomachines would have the same antigen markers on them as whoever's cells they are for. Their body would not recognise the nanomachines as foreign.

That would be for nanomachines that constantly circulate through the body and would be programmed to respond to different ailments.

What we are going to see first is people being given a course of nanomachines that perform a specific purpose. They are currently working on ones that destroy atherosclerotic plaques so if you had someone who needed that treatment. They would be given an injection of nanomachines and they would do their job and the body would dispose of them after the work had been done.

One of the delivery methods they are working on is to use a lipid cloaking around the nanomachines, mimicking how a virus gets in. There's many different avenues being explored and I'm sure we will see this technology play a big part in our futures as our scientists figure out how to get it to work the way they want.

 

[Emma]

VSauce just released an interesting video about Alzheimer's today. Here:

The reason I posted it here is that even though we don't know exactly what leads to someone developing Alzheimer's we know that the plaques that build up in the brain cause it. We just don't know what causes the plaques to develop. But ie we used nanomachines, nanites, it wouldn't matter. They could break up these plaques and remove them so they didn't cause problems. So we'd have an Alsheimer's cure right there with a mechanical solution. That would be extremely difficult with a chemical solution since we don't know the conditions that start the buildup of these plaques.

 

[Lydia]

Probably wouldn't work, because we would build up a resistance to the medication and then we would be susceptible to the diseases they were designed to stop.