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Post by Lib on Aug 15, 2013 20:48:25 GMT -5
I'm trying to create a disease for a fantasy story. Any ideas of websites or books that could help? Google leads me to long technical definitions of disease, epidemiology, and pathology, but I'm hoping to find something simple. I'd really like some basic information on how diseases are classified, spread, treated, etc, so I can create something believable. Thanks.
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Post by boomboom on Aug 15, 2013 21:46:18 GMT -5
Hey Lib - Try this site www.cdc.gov/ncezid/ to start with. It might have links to other sites, too. I found it on the Center for Disease and Control website, another place you might look. You might also try the NIH (National Institutes of Health) website. It may have information there or links to others. Google or look in PBS and Discovery under infectious diseases, plagues, viruses or how flu spreads etc. I know I have seen documentaries on that. From those documentaries, I learned that most infectious viruses mutate in animals, including birds. These are called zoonatic (animal borne). The disease that is created in one animal can only be passed on to another species that is able to accept a pathogen from that species. It has to do with the type of cell receptors the species has and the early virus has. Once it passes to another species, it mutates again and can be passed to another species that can accept a virus from the host. For example, a bird carries an early version of the flu. The bird migrates and lands in a pond or interacts with the chickens on a farm. The wild bird and the chicken share similar receptors so it jumps to the chicken. Once in the chicken, it can jump to the pig which shares certain receptors with the chicken. The virus mutates some in the pig so it can latch on to the pigs receptors which include receptors humans have. Humans cannot get diseases from birds but they can get some from pigs because we are close. Each step mutates further. Pigs pass it on in a form to humans and it can mutate to survive and flourish in humans. That is why so many flus start in Asia. The disease can start in birds far away, but they migrate to rural Asia where people live in close proximity to their animals, thus increasing the chances of the initial virus or bacteria to mutate and hop from one species to anther. It is also why Native Americans didn't have a lot of the diseases the Europeans had. Native Americans had few domestic animals and so had developed fewer diseases and no immunities. (However, it pretty certain syphilis came from the "New World" to Europe and the rest because some mummies of either the Incans or Aztecs or Mayans (can't remember which) have signs of syphilis type lesions and the disease didn't show up in Europe until right after Europeans found the Americas.) They are pretty sure plagues like Ebola come from Africa because monkeys get it and Africans eat monkeys. However, that is a guess. No one is sure. It is probably the virus mutates deep in the jungle and bounced up the food chain to us The fact that birds can carry the early versions or makings of these transmittable diseases and fly all over the world makes it very hard to control. Now we fly all over the world, too, so we are giving the birds competition because we don't need an intermediary like chickens and pigs to mutate and transmit diseases. Delivery right to your door. Transmittable diseases are also classified by how they are transmitted - by air (coughing, breath, etc.), touch (many flues) or body fluids (AIDS is an example of the body fluid type as are most STDs. Ebola also). That is very important for the pattern of contamination and how quickly it can spread. Since I'm doing this from memory, I probably got some details wrong, but the overall picture is correct. I'm going to have to do similar research as my story has a lot of genetics in it.
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Post by mllersil on Aug 16, 2013 7:56:41 GMT -5
Roughly what kind of disease do you have in mind? Infectious? Neoplastic (= cancer)? Environmentally? Or more like autoimmune? Or maybe a mixture ...? Sadly, I don't know about a proper English info site. But if you ever need help in fine-tuning your disease, feel free to ask. And boom - not bad! *thumbs-up*
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Post by Lib on Aug 16, 2013 14:13:01 GMT -5
Thanks for the link, Boom, and I bet you can guess what I'm working on. I'm trying to unravel the mysteries of the Red Pox from World of Warcraft, since I'm working on a short story about it. (The whole disease thing will be different in the novel, of course.) In the game it's a violent disease that seems to last for several years. Impossible in real life - I doubt anyone could survive vomiting blood for over a decade - so I'm trying to find something that makes sense. It has to (1) be fatal in some cases, (2) last many years, (3) be contagious, and also (4) eventually it's either cured or the patient gets over it. Some sort of combination of malaria and leprosy, maybe?
I'll let you know if I need any help with the fine-tuning, mllersil. This seems so typical for me: researching one little detail, like what exactly the Red Pox was, is going to take more time and effort than writing the whole story. LOL.
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Post by mllersil on Aug 16, 2013 15:09:31 GMT -5
Hm ... *thinking* ... a kind of syphillis maybe? If untreated this is kind of fatal, it lasts for many years in different stages, it's definitely human-to-human contagious and it's possible to cure it (though it won't go away by itself). Also, a kind of retroviral disease with an appropriate mutation rate would be a possibility. Leprosy is not really fatal by itself, but by means of secondary infection. But that's nitpicking, dead is dead. Malaria is a parasitic disease and not contagious in a person-by-person way. But it can appear seemingly cured for decades and then unexpectedly strike back again, which is highly interesting for a writer I think. If you are doing fantasy and you are free to invent, I'd recommend Chlamydia as a base of operations, especially C. pneumoniae. Those are contagious intracellular bacteria causing a bad pneumonia among other things. Because they are living inside the body cells - which is highly atypical for bacteria - they are difficult to treat, can stay inside their "host" for a long time, making the disease chronic or recurrent and trigger a lot of other problems. Good luck!
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Post by Lib on Aug 17, 2013 11:01:45 GMT -5
Ah, thanks! That should help me figure it out.
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Post by wetdirt on Aug 17, 2013 12:33:50 GMT -5
Here's another angle: How about something that's toxic but not obvious? How about a cadmium glaze on a vessel used to hold water? The vessel lasts for years, and during fall, the low water in rivers could go acidic, which would leach more metal into the water, and cause a poisoning that would come and go in an odd pattern, worse in fall and better in spring. It wouldn't go away till the vessel broke and was replaced by something else. Sort of a variation on the lead-plumbing idea for Rome. Cadmium: yellow & orange pigment, acid sensitive. Lead-white pigment, usual lead poisoning. Leaded glass variation: acid in wine leaches out the lead. Chrome:yellow, but not a very nice yellow. Copper: verdigris green, but would taste nasty. Hmmm. No wonder rich people stuck to gold and silver, at least your table service isn't trying to kill you.
And I also like food-chain things like plague, not maybe plague itself, but the idea of some fanatic banning cats that eat the mice that carry the fleas, and that longterm drought/famine cycles push rodent populations towards/away from cities. That stuff is hard to decipher because of the multiple layers of causes.
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