- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
- Messages
- 14,738
- Reaction score
- 24,779
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Website
- elizabethbonesteel.com
Relevant details: I'm writing SF with an isolated population that's got a fair amount of knowledge but limited resources/equipment.
A bit of worldbuilding I’m considering now involves cancer treatments. I have two questions:
1) Is it plausible that some (clearly not all) chemotherapy drugs could be synthesized only from plants? (The amount of tech they have is malleable, but I don’t want it to seem absurd.)
2) Could a population, over a number of centuries, develop a resistance to those chemotherapy drugs, and hence suffer an upsurge in fatalities from the types of cancers previously treated with some success?
I’ve been merrily googling how chemo drugs are manufactured, but I don’t want to head down this path if it’s not plausible on its face. I can invent all kinds of technology, but cells are cells.
(I have also considerd pursing We’ve Introduced Something Bad Because We Tried Gene Editing And Screwed Up, but having the tech for gene editing feels like a bit of a stretch to me, especially since I posit they don’t have tools delicate enough to make microchips. Which I could also change if I had to, I suppose.)
A bit of worldbuilding I’m considering now involves cancer treatments. I have two questions:
1) Is it plausible that some (clearly not all) chemotherapy drugs could be synthesized only from plants? (The amount of tech they have is malleable, but I don’t want it to seem absurd.)
2) Could a population, over a number of centuries, develop a resistance to those chemotherapy drugs, and hence suffer an upsurge in fatalities from the types of cancers previously treated with some success?
I’ve been merrily googling how chemo drugs are manufactured, but I don’t want to head down this path if it’s not plausible on its face. I can invent all kinds of technology, but cells are cells.
(I have also considerd pursing We’ve Introduced Something Bad Because We Tried Gene Editing And Screwed Up, but having the tech for gene editing feels like a bit of a stretch to me, especially since I posit they don’t have tools delicate enough to make microchips. Which I could also change if I had to, I suppose.)