Space makes germs more deadly Salmonella likes it in orbit, and not just for the view. According to research conducted on the International Space Station (ISS), the effects of microgravity trip a switch in the bacterium that makes it much more virulent. The findings, which are to be published in PNAS Online Early Edition suggest astronauts could be at …
They're lab mice. Their sole reason to be is in the hope that the experiments conducted on them will help one day to cure sickness, preserve life, lead to better treatments, etc etc, of human beings.
Fuck the mice. There of course is a better alternative, that we test these things on retarded animal rights hippies instead. I quite like that idea.
As to the science - interesting. But we sci-fi types have always known that bugs get more nasty in space. Mmmmmhmmm
So how come the thousands of different bacteria normally colonizing humans were not affected/studied until now? One would think that astronauts would notice if their acne turned virulent up there or their bowels became umm, disturbed. Don't tell me they are completely disinfected before a flight, nothing short of incinerating a person could do that.
"Fuck the mice. There of course is a better alternative, that we test these things on retarded animal rights hippies instead. I quite like that idea."
I second that.
Especially retarded animal rights hippies who are so involved in preservation of the life of gerbils that they are willing to dig up corpses.
Of course microgravity is dangerous, think about the energy you use to get up.. now think how much easier is it in space? hardly any energy at all.. protein bonding and chemistry in general is affected by gravity too.. as much of it is positional.
If you give a bacteria a growth medium it will adapt to that medium faster in space using energy to reproduce rather than to arrange position. Faster reproduction as any understander of Darwin will tell you leads to a more evolved bacteria...
At the scale of chemical reactions, gravity is an extremely weak force. How can the scientists be so sure the difference is due to microgravity? Even at the scale of bacteria (many times that of proteins), gravity is extremely weak. Unless the experiment can be repeated and other factors (acceleration into space, trace chemical, or increased radiation in space (a much more likely candidate)) can be ruled out, I am sceptical. Gabor Laszlo makes a good point indeed.
..."trip a switch" - So the great maker (I'm not religious btw) decided that bacterium have a magic 'no gravity=3x virulent' switch - sounds like something a BBC journo would say.
Just what is it about evolution for millenia on a 1x gravity planet that makes it more effective in a 0x gravity environment!? I thought if you take an organism out of its natural habitat it will not have developed any necessary skills/processes to be any better but will be much worse.
Now try the experiment with other dangerous bacterium, I'd say it happened by chance in this salmonella. In fact I'd think they did actually carry the tests out on lots of bacterium, and this single one showed the effects causing the sensational storyline! Journalists eh? Who needs em!? ;-)
Another possibility is that because the shuttle was travelling at thousands of miles an hour for days that the effects of time slowed where they were in relation to the earthbound parallel experiments, hence giving the bacterium 3x as long to form!? ;-) *joke*
Why not send the hippies into space to see if the micro gravity has the same super growth reaction to the bits of their brains that control logic!
Maybe they'll come back reasonable human beings instead of beardy, gibbering, rodent worrying, grave robbers with nothing better to do than complain about the people that help to keep them disease and B.O. free!
The bloody fools. I'd rather have the death of a hundred pesky mice on my hands than a nasty caustic burning sensation from untested products.
..that those people in the Andes are falling ill then from the meteor=crashed alien spaceship that plonked itself near Lake Quetzacoatl or whatever its called. I know what I think when someone mentions alien superbugs and it ain't bacteria! it's things twice as tall as a man with the tentacles and the teeth and the lust for nubile human females. Oh well at least Mrs Taw will be safe <ouch!> I mean, in great danger! <double ouch!>
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