Asymptotic Medicine

Once science proceeds far enough in an alien civilization to completely understand biology, from genetics to cell protein use and formation, and all the details of molecular signaling and ontogenesis, there would have been applications to medicine all along the way, leading at the end to something that might be called 'asymptotic medicine'. This would not be restricted to simply understanding every last detail of the alien's bodies, but also would include the engineering aspects of making repairs and even modifications to them. These engineering considerations involve the action in different locations in the body of a variety of chemicals and compounds not naturally present there, as well as the use of current, temperature, strain and motion on the cells and organs of the body. The use of autonomous objects, large and microscopic, to perform various actions within the body would be understood as well. This grand body of knowledge is asymptotic medicine.

Medicine refers to doing something with an existing alien, rather than industrial gestation which is the production of one outside the normal process. It would include termination of an alien's life, for example after some aging process had run its course, or for some other reason. It would be used if there was some damage to an alien, after an accident. Regeneration of missing tissue or components would be a mainstay of asymptotic medicine, and a question for the future is how fast can regeneration be accomplished. If the details of cellular growth are totally understood, would it be possible that they could be accelerated, by a percentage, a factor of two, or even a factor of ten or a hundred. This is a feature of current medicine that is currently absent, as it has to be because our knowledge does not yet extend to cellular activity, such as what signals a cell might accept in order to replicate its nucleus or to divide its cell wall. We do not know how much acceleration a cell's protein synthesis might be able to deliver, and what might be done to slip needed precedents through the cell wall, or how to make temporary cells that gradually replace themselves with complete cells, or really anything about any possible mechanisms for medical regeneration, or even what concepts will eventually be the most relevant for that branch of technology.

Medicine also includes the preparation of all those chemical compounds needed for treatments of any sort, the construction of any tools needed to perform some actions, and the growth of cells or organs outside any body, as well as the techniques for inserting them in an alien's body. It may be simpler to accomplish damage repair by regenerating some damaged parts in place, and growing replacement parts outside and then replacing the damaged ones.

There would be the ability to detect and diagnose any cellular damage that was beyond the ability of the alien's cells or immune system to cope with. This would involve cancerous tumors or instances of poisoning. Then, in addition, the treatment of such cellular damage would be known and perfected. Whether it involves restoration of existing cells to normal activity and status, or the removal of damaged cells and replacement, either en masse with externally grown cells, or internally by normal or accelerated cell reproduction, this would be available for use.

If the alien living facilities, arcologies or whatever else was used, still had infectious agents present, then medicine would also include techniques and tools for ridding any alien of any infection. How that would be done probably depends on the infectious agent, with the options being simply enhancing the body's ability to deal with the agent, to inserting chemicals, autonomous cells, or robotic devices of small scale, locally or globally within the body, or by some external application of radiation, heat, ultrasound or something completely different.

An aspect of alien asymptotic medicine hardly contemplated today on Earth involves the modification of the genetics of the aliens themselves to improve some aspect of their health. The alien genome might be improvable in multiple ways, each of which is designed to improve one aspect of health. Each organ has specific genes which control its expression, and these might be tweaked to help that organ survive damage, aging, infection or any other ill effects. These genetic modifications might be limited to simply tweaking of an organ's capabilities, but might also be much more extensive. The aging process occurs by multiple means, but at the most universal level, there might be cellular aging in a particular alien species. This, if it exists, might also be slightly modified or actually replaced to allow greatly expanded lifetimes for aliens. Aging of aliens can be dealt by with palliative treatments, or by actually affecting the underlying cause of the aging. Besides generic cellular aging, there can also be some specific aging processes, each unique to a particular organ. After the approach to asymptotic medicine is completed, these would each be treated separately, leaving the alien individuals with an extended lifetime, together with excellent health and the ability to respond to injury quickly and efficiently.

These are simply the possibilities, and the important part for an alien civilization is what are the limits that will be found for each of these aspects. If an alien has a visual sensor, like our eye, the question that they will find the answer to is how fast can one be regenerated. This limit will be known, after enough investigation has occurred to find the final limit. There will be limits known for everything, including the limits to which the lifetime of an alien might be extended.

The essential concept behind asymptotic medicine is the same as behind all other branches of asymptotic science. There is only so much knowledge to be gained, and the accumulation of it is a one-way street, with continued progress, meaning that the end will be reached. Our understanding of science to date here on Earth is enough to let us know that the rate of progress is not infinitesimal, but rather enough to allow the end to be reached with some centuries of work. Perhaps it is faster on an alien planet, or perhaps it is slower, but the rate of progress is not different by more than an order of magnitude or two. Thus, within a reasonably short time compared to the duration of the species, and within a negligible amount of time compared to the duration of life itself, any alien civilization which does not crash and collapse will reach asymptotic medicine and other sciences as well.