The Quickening
The Quickening is an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It is one of my favorite episodes for a long list of reasons.
The episode is about Dr. Bashir trying to cure a condition called the blight. It is a kind of curse or punishment for an entire race of people for daring to defy The Dominion.
Everyone is born with a black, spidery splotch somewhere on their body and at some point it turns red, spreads rapidly and the person dies fairly quickly. The point at which it turns red and rapidly -- though agonizingly -- kills them is called The Quickening. Most people don't make it to adulthood, so it has destroyed their entire society across the entire world.
Like the Star Trek (original series) episode The Way to Eden, modern tech turns out to be a problem for these people. When Dr. Bashir tries to treat them, the electrical field from his equipment makes things worse.
To his credit, he doesn't give up. He finds more low tech means to check their vital signs, etc.
When most of the Away Team return to the ship, Dr. Bashir remains behind on the planet to continue treating a woman in late pregnancy. His treatments seem to not help her but she really wants him to continue for the sake of the baby.
When the baby is born, it has no spidery black blight mark. Dr. Bashir is able to tell her that her baby is actually healthy just before she finally dies from the quickening of the blight and the effort of giving birth.
Dr. Bashir then goes to a man who is the closest thing to a doctor these people have -- a man he has not gotten along well with because the man's only treatment is to help people die faster if they wish it once The Quickening begins -- and tells that man that he was unable to find a cure but has found a vaccine and asks him to give it to all the pregnant women he can find.
Another detail of the episode that I like is that at some point when Dr. Bashir is feeling like "This is too hard and cannot be done" someone tells him basically to check his ego at the door. They say something like "Just because YOU can't readily solve it, doesn't mean it can't be solved." and this helps him double down and keep at it in the face of seeming failure until the baby is born and turns out to be clear of the condition.
The first clip below is pretty hard to watch. She's already really sick and she gives birth and promptly dies. The second clip is much nicer: Dr. Bashir tells the people he's found a vaccine. People who track me down are usually desperate people who are all out of options. One woman with classical Cystic Fibrosis who was basically out of time tracked me down some years ago. She is still alive and private messaged me just the other day. She messages me every few months and using my info has likely extended her life by some number of years, though it seems unlikely that she will ever really be well.
The best use for what I know is not miracle cures for desperate people not far from death's door. The best use for what I know is a better future for the next generation.
To that end, I am trying to figure out how to pursue my urban planning career dreams and I write a small blog called Nutrient Dense which is aimed at helping people eat better in spite of the challenges of modern life. I also have fantasies of making a dent in America's housing crisis because homeless people die on average something like 20 years younger than housed people.
I use computers -- so much so that I joke that "My life is online" -- but I don't use microwaves and there are many ways in which my life is more low tech than that of a lot of Americans. I don't tend to talk about that -- though perhaps I should -- because people don't want to hear that "Your modern conveniences are probably killing you."
For example: In addition to not using a microwave, I don't use a dishwasher and I don't use a vacuum cleaner. I gave them all up many years ago and have no plans to ever go back.
Perhaps someone will trip across this blog and design legitimate medical studies to validate some of the information here (and give me appropriate credit if they have ANY ethics). If you are desperate enough and have no other options, you may be able to use the info here to get SOME relief.
I also seem to have found a means to treat trypanosoma, something doctors don't really know how to do, and it would be great if that were expanded upon and spread, in part because it's probably something you see in Black Americans more than White Americans. I would feel good about reversing something to some degree that probably is, like The Blight, holding back an entire population by shortening the lives of a great many of them.
But this blog is NOT medical advice and you should NOT be looking to me for miracle cures in the face of imminent death. If you are basically dying already, I probably cannot really help you.
If you REALLY want to see this information proliferate, I encourage you to join one of my health reddits and engage me in discussion. A lot of the basic essentials I know that helped save my life were learned on an email list full of knowledgeable people trying to solve their own health issues, so it's a model I know can work, though so far I have spent a lot of years getting exactly zero traction on efforts of that sort.
That's the ONLY way I know that ordinary people can realistically take control of their health in the face of serious conditions and stop handing over the responsibility for their health to medical professionals: By developing a large GROUP of knowledgeable Ordinary Joes who can share what they know and a space for sharing such.
The episode is about Dr. Bashir trying to cure a condition called the blight. It is a kind of curse or punishment for an entire race of people for daring to defy The Dominion.
Everyone is born with a black, spidery splotch somewhere on their body and at some point it turns red, spreads rapidly and the person dies fairly quickly. The point at which it turns red and rapidly -- though agonizingly -- kills them is called The Quickening. Most people don't make it to adulthood, so it has destroyed their entire society across the entire world.
Like the Star Trek (original series) episode The Way to Eden, modern tech turns out to be a problem for these people. When Dr. Bashir tries to treat them, the electrical field from his equipment makes things worse.
To his credit, he doesn't give up. He finds more low tech means to check their vital signs, etc.
When most of the Away Team return to the ship, Dr. Bashir remains behind on the planet to continue treating a woman in late pregnancy. His treatments seem to not help her but she really wants him to continue for the sake of the baby.
When the baby is born, it has no spidery black blight mark. Dr. Bashir is able to tell her that her baby is actually healthy just before she finally dies from the quickening of the blight and the effort of giving birth.
Dr. Bashir then goes to a man who is the closest thing to a doctor these people have -- a man he has not gotten along well with because the man's only treatment is to help people die faster if they wish it once The Quickening begins -- and tells that man that he was unable to find a cure but has found a vaccine and asks him to give it to all the pregnant women he can find.
Another detail of the episode that I like is that at some point when Dr. Bashir is feeling like "This is too hard and cannot be done" someone tells him basically to check his ego at the door. They say something like "Just because YOU can't readily solve it, doesn't mean it can't be solved." and this helps him double down and keep at it in the face of seeming failure until the baby is born and turns out to be clear of the condition.
The first clip below is pretty hard to watch. She's already really sick and she gives birth and promptly dies. The second clip is much nicer: Dr. Bashir tells the people he's found a vaccine. People who track me down are usually desperate people who are all out of options. One woman with classical Cystic Fibrosis who was basically out of time tracked me down some years ago. She is still alive and private messaged me just the other day. She messages me every few months and using my info has likely extended her life by some number of years, though it seems unlikely that she will ever really be well.
The best use for what I know is not miracle cures for desperate people not far from death's door. The best use for what I know is a better future for the next generation.
To that end, I am trying to figure out how to pursue my urban planning career dreams and I write a small blog called Nutrient Dense which is aimed at helping people eat better in spite of the challenges of modern life. I also have fantasies of making a dent in America's housing crisis because homeless people die on average something like 20 years younger than housed people.
I use computers -- so much so that I joke that "My life is online" -- but I don't use microwaves and there are many ways in which my life is more low tech than that of a lot of Americans. I don't tend to talk about that -- though perhaps I should -- because people don't want to hear that "Your modern conveniences are probably killing you."
For example: In addition to not using a microwave, I don't use a dishwasher and I don't use a vacuum cleaner. I gave them all up many years ago and have no plans to ever go back.
Perhaps someone will trip across this blog and design legitimate medical studies to validate some of the information here (and give me appropriate credit if they have ANY ethics). If you are desperate enough and have no other options, you may be able to use the info here to get SOME relief.
I also seem to have found a means to treat trypanosoma, something doctors don't really know how to do, and it would be great if that were expanded upon and spread, in part because it's probably something you see in Black Americans more than White Americans. I would feel good about reversing something to some degree that probably is, like The Blight, holding back an entire population by shortening the lives of a great many of them.
But this blog is NOT medical advice and you should NOT be looking to me for miracle cures in the face of imminent death. If you are basically dying already, I probably cannot really help you.
If you REALLY want to see this information proliferate, I encourage you to join one of my health reddits and engage me in discussion. A lot of the basic essentials I know that helped save my life were learned on an email list full of knowledgeable people trying to solve their own health issues, so it's a model I know can work, though so far I have spent a lot of years getting exactly zero traction on efforts of that sort.
That's the ONLY way I know that ordinary people can realistically take control of their health in the face of serious conditions and stop handing over the responsibility for their health to medical professionals: By developing a large GROUP of knowledgeable Ordinary Joes who can share what they know and a space for sharing such.
