* The 2014-2015 senior student signature series features area senior class students – and their own “signature” outlooks on a topic of their choice. A new outlook will be posted on Cross-Counties Connect each Friday. The series opens with point of view comments by seniors from Mountain Lake Public High School. The opinions can be found by clicking on the Family & Faith link on the website’s header, and scrolling down to, and clicking on, Outlook. Their teachers are Brenda Feil, Kim Syverson and Debby Jass.
A Race for the Cures
In the twentieth century alone, smallpox has killed an estimated four hundred million people—more than both world wars combined. Though that may seem staggering, those deaths account for only a quarter of the total casualties from infectious diseases in that same century.
After the eradication of smallpox, as well as the eradication of other deadly illnesses, researchers gained a better understanding of the process of wiping out a disease, but to do so requires cures that are difficult to formulate. Today, researchers have more access to sophisticated technology and know more about the problems they want to solve; this helps them research cures by using many new and innovative methods driven by ingenious ideas.
One of the newest methods is the use of nanorobots, which are so small people need microscopes to see them clearly. These bots are not only tiny, but also extremely agile and precise, making them incredibly useful for medical purposes. Some scientists are already researching techniques to use these miniscule machines to deliver medication to specific parts of the body, which can be very helpful for treating infections by targeting the area in need. With better materials, these robots can get even smaller and hopefully reach more places that are currently inaccessible. Someday researchers expect these nanorobots may become advanced enough to replace most other methods of drug delivery.
The second method scientists are using to fight infectious diseases is biochemistry, a field of science that helps researchers learn about the composition of disease-causing microorganisms called pathogens and their inner workings. With this knowledge, scientists get new insight on the disease at hand, which helps them create drugs that are better at targeting the disease. Biochemistry also helps scientists learn about the way a pathogen reacts to medicine, showing which drugs are effective and which are ineffective by testing them on non-human subjects like rats and other animals. Though the act of exposing animals to these experimental drugs seems cynical and unethical, new drugs have to be tested on something that is preferably not human.
Genetics is another method scientists are using to fight diseases. Some people feel that researchers in this field are abusing their power, using their knowledge to create glow-in-the-dark cats and messing with the laws of nature for fun, but that is not true. Genetics has proven to be a very valuable field, paving the way for many discoveries about the origins of certain illnesses that scientists have unearthed by examining their DNA. Every discovery made in the field, no matter how controversial, helps scientists understand living things, especially these infectious diseases. Knowing where these diseases come from provides a hint on how to develop a cure because pathogens that are similar can usually be cured by the same methods. Genetics has also helped researchers understand more about how a certain disease works by interpreting parts of a pathogen’s DNA. Knowing this, researchers are better able to formalize a more effective method to cure afflicted patients.
All of these methods are helping researchers help people in need, and even though they are new and may be slow at times, they are helping to save the lives of millions of people. Some methods may be controversial, but remember that any discovery made in one field helps all the other fields of science and society as a whole. These techniques, the knowledge of infectious diseases, and the research behind them will also pave the way for scientists to discover better ways to cure diseases.