Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Alternative Antrax treatments

Okay, this question is a little harder than the last one.

I'm writing (or at least trying to write) a next generation fic.

I believe that Clark's children would be able to catch diseases. This is because I believe Clark's inablity to catch diseases stems from his alien origin, not his invulnerablity. I think there is plenty of evidence for that in the show even though it is not a popular theroy in fandom.

Because of that, I also believe his children would respond to drugs, but sitll be
invulnerable to bullets, bombs, knives, etc.
However, as part of my A - Plot, I want their oldest daughter to encounter a virus that can't be cured easily. I chose anthrax because acording to my information, their is a a - born version. (Meaning she could encounter it and not realize it - plus I wouldn't have to worrry about how to pentrate the skin.) Besides that, the info says oral drugs only work before the symptoms show.

I don't want her using the oral drugs because it would be too easy. Besides, she would have to realize she encountered it.
The standard antrax treatment is with IVs. Since she is supposed to be invulnerable, that treatment should not work for her, unless they used kryptonie to pentrate the skin.

And that brings me to my problem. I would like her to be invulerable to kryptonite as well. First of all, it sounds more reasonable with the information in the story.
Second of all, using standard antrax treatments to treat this problem sounds to easy to me. I want there to be a few days where they really do believe she will die and they don't know what to do.
Therefore, I would like to find some other treatment for antraz that sounds plausible. Either another "real" treatment that is simply not popular, but would work in her case, or another treatment that would work in the LNC universe. (They do some strange things with science - cloning, etc.) But I want it to make sense that it could work.

The only idea I can come up with that is a medical treatment but could work with a woman invulernable to needles is radiation. But that doesn't make sense as a treatment for anthrax. See what I mean?

If there really are no other options, I will assume that kryptonite could penerate her skin, and they'll use standard anthrax drugs. I'm not willing to let my character die. But that's my last option, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here.


P. S. Thanks for those of you who answered my Swiss chocolate question

Actually, depending on how you look at it, radiation could work...

Anthrax is bacterial. High doses of radiation would kill the bacteria. But if she's invulnerable, the radiation wouldn't harm her. You'd need a high dose, but we know that Superman can handle that. He's walked into the reaction chamber of a nuclear power plant, been hit with a small atomic blast, and... he's flown right up to the edge of the sun. Which might be the best option here. There's a lot of hard radiation in space, and more that's produced by the sun (which is, after all, a giant nuclear reactor). Particularly solar flares. It's radiation that would strengthen a kryptonian, but would kill most Earth-based life. Including bacteria.

Of course, the bacteria are inside her body, which could, depending on how you define the power, mean that they're within her aura of invulnerability. Which makes them much harder to kill.

expanding on Paul's radiation theory

you probably wouldn't need to go all the way to the sun in order to kill the bacteria...

This is what I was thinking (given that it is LNC and anything can happen from time-travel to alternate dimensions)...

if the anthrax could be treated via a high dose of radiation, this seems to me it would be similar to radiation therapies used to treat cancer. This could be done through producing an aerosol product with some form of radioactive element mixed with a combination of antibacterial agents and vasodilators and inhaled (think of an asthma inhaler or ventilator).... the vasodilators would increase the probability that the products enter the blood-stream, all done without exposing the individual to kryptonite in order to inject the radioactive element (as would happen in a "normal" human cancer patient)...


I would be happy to expand on this theory for you, if you like it... but wanted to keep this post short and sweet so you don't get turned off by my technobabble and pharmacological knowledge...

but in reality, although I know plenty about pharmacology I don't know anything about anthrax and would have to look into it a bit more before I can elaborate on any precise drugs to use and what combinations etc....

Anthrax treatment, even alternative treatments, still involves IV antibiotics (especially if it's inhalational anthrax). There was talk at one time of developing a ciprofloxacin inhaler, but I believe it's still in development. You could take that and run with it, though. Inanimate objects contaminated with anthrax spores are typically irradiated with gamma radiation, however, so you might (also) be able to devise a radiation treatment - inhaled or otherwise - that would kill the infective agent but not the patient.

Had you considered anything else, like heavy metal poisoning*, maybe? (If she can respond to drugs, she could be affected by the ingestion of heavy metals, since the body does actually require some of them in very small amounts.) Heavy metal poisoning is a medical emergency. Heavy metals - arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, thallium - can be inhaled or ingested, so you wouldn't have to break the skin. And symptoms can be gradual (say, for instance, she's using a coffee cup with a lead-based glaze but doesn't realize/notice it) and non-specific at first (and therefore hard to diagnose), so she could have worsening symptoms (and quite serious ones) before they figure it out. You can choose a heavy metal where the treatment, chelation therapy, is oral (ie, lead or thallium - although how she ingested/inhaled thallium might be tricky).

'Toc

*A subject treated particularly effectively in one of Wendy's stories.