D46 Preventive medicine. Report to Sesma with some guidance on hygiene

Mr Fernando Sesma Manzano

MADRID SPAIN

 

No. of Copies 1

Language Spanish

 

Sir:

 

In a conversation held with you over the telephone you asked us to send you, on successive dates, a series of reports whose content would be directed towards the hygienic measures we judged most suitable to be applied by Earth people, with the humanitarian aim of avoiding as far as possible the appearance of the typical syndromes recorded by terrestrial pathology.

 

You are well aware of the range of difficulties that undertaking a task of this magnitude may present for us.

 

We can classify these into different categories. We wish to present you with a brief outline to serve as a guide for understanding us better.

 

In the first place, we must confine ourselves to sending you an almost anarchic miscellany of specific prophylactic advice for a very restricted series of risks that the organism of the OEMII may face if these preventive measures are not put into practice.

 

As you know, the series of aggressive agents that can injure the tissues of the OEMII's organism is very wide, above all on an OYAA (STAR) such as yours, where the rich flora of pathogenic micro-organisms and the exuberant variety of viruses make the planning of effective means of defence extremely difficult.

 

For example, we warn you that the whole series of antibiotics created by you is contributing to create in the future new, much more resistant strains of viruses and pathogenic germs immune to those pharmacological products, so that in a future we estimate in the order of magnitude of 180 years ±10%, 72% of the species catalogued by you will still be as virulent as before the appearance of those drugs.

 

Of course, that need not alarm you excessively, since by then terrestrial specialists in Biochemistry will have taken a gigantic step in the fight against disease.

 

We say, then, that if we had to give you advice regarding the precautions you must take to prevent each of the diseases that darken the sombre panorama of your Planet, we would need hundreds of bound volumes.

 

But there is also a serious objection: Any intelligent OEMII (MAN) with intellectual training in the Field of the applied Sciences can understand us perfectly.

 

You know perfectly well that surgical techniques, Pharmacology, in short the therapeutic techniques used by the medical specialists of Earth, are subordinate to the general context of the scientific stage through which Earth is currently passing.

 

We will give some examples perfectly well known to you: Until specialists in Biochemistry managed to study the polypeptide composition of certain enzymes that accelerate the metabolic reactions taking place at cellular level, it was not possible for you to use certain medicines capable of activating the formation of those enzymes when the metabolic process was inhibited by external agents.

 

Until electronics technicians and electrical network specialists were able to perfect high-frequency generating circuits, there was no possibility for the doctors of Earth to use this technique known to you by the name of ultra-short-wave Diathermy.

 

Just as it was not possible to obtain such sensitive instruments for ophthalmological surgery until the scientists of Earth, by perfecting equipment for activating pure crystals, obtained very fine beams of coherent radiation known to you by the name of laser, which, among other applications, is used today as a high-precision scalpel in operations on lesions of the Retina, for example.

 

How would it have been possible for you, for example, without the help of Operational Research and the study of Markov chains in the mathematical Field, to perfect the programs used in the electronic computers employed for the diagnosis of diseases?

 

These examples, well known to you, reveal that therapeutic techniques will therefore be subordinate to scientific advance in all fields of knowledge. We could not, therefore, reveal new techniques to you without first giving you a general panorama of our advances. Something that presents obvious difficulties.

 

Since in many cases the prophylactic measures advised by the specialists of Earth are valid for you for the time being, we shall confine ourselves to offering you some suggestions that can be put into practice without using unknown means, techniques not yet used or scientific principles not yet discovered by you.

 

The next report will deal with a procedure capable of protecting you from intense variations of light (violent contrasts in light level when, for example, on beaches, you pass from shaded areas to others with lighting rich in ultraviolet rays). The use of ordinary sunglasses does not neutralise those sudden changes. This is very serious, and terrestrial ophthalmologists do not raise much of an outcry about the harmful effects on the retina. How would you solve the problem with techniques within your reach?