Fringe Science by Kevin R. Grazier

Author:Kevin R. Grazier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pop Culture, Television
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2011-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Pushing the Boundaries of Infectious Disease

One of my favorite aspects of Fringe, and one of its greatest services for science, is the episodes that push the limits and definitions of the very concept they are centered around. What ultimately defines an infectious disease? What are the boundaries of virology? And is something “infectious” if it doesn’t enter your body through traditional communicable disease pathways (i.e., via inhalation, contact with the eyes or mouth, contact with an open wound, etc.)?

“The Ghost Network” is one of these. In another, my favorite episode, “The No-Brainer” (1-12), a disgruntled computer engineer created a hypnotic computer virus that liquefied the brains of its victims through audiovisual hyperstimulation. The program literally fried its viewers’ brains. Most medical cases of brain liquefication (referred to as colliquative necrosis) occur due to what’s discovered postmortem to be bacterial or fungal infections that kill the cells that comprise the central nervous system. Medical research into brain liquefication has not yielded definitive causes, and recorded cases are few and far between.[22] But this brilliantly constructed episode does beg asking the question: What can a computer virus do? What physiological damage can one do through a computer? With the average world denizen spending over sixty hours a month online (equivalent to thirty straight days a year!)[23] and our ever increasing dependency on computers for daily personal and professional life, exploring the potential for computers to act as twenty-first century disease vessels is an interesting hypothetical exercise.

Another interesting application? The idea of infecting people with emotions or through kinetic energy. In the episode “Bad Dreams” (1-17), Agent Dunham realized she was sharing dreams with a fellow experimental cortexiphan subject who was able to control people through thoughts and emotions. At one point, her male counterpart led a group of people to a rooftop to commit suicide—a kind of sleepwalking epidemic. In a later episode, “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver” (2-17), another cortexaphan victim suffering from late-stage cancer killed off other cortexaphan kids one by one by giving them an aggressive, accelerated cancer via energy transfer with the touch of his hand. It’s a scientific fact that cancer cannot be contracted simply through touch, but this cluster of cases feeds into a significant theme on Fringe: the idea of chaos, disorder, and loss of control through infection.

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