Disease treatable by zero-G

Question

Background story: In near future (max 10 years from now) mega-rich person suffers yet unknown disease. He obviously employs every doctor possible and spends loads from his fortune on researching, what is wrong with them.

The scientists come up with some time-delaying solution: Such disease has little or almost no progress, if a patient is in microgravity (= very close to zero gravity). Our hero has now to decide. To die with 90% probability in one year, or, buy a ticket to ISS and stay here for some time and hope for the best. But he could be stuck there forever...

The question: Is such disease plausible? And ultimately, even if its on verge on implausibility, what symptoms should such disease have? How to make it more plausible?

Answer 1

Such a disease is definitely plausible. Human physiology is heavily influenced by gravity in many ways, none of which we fully understand. It's entirely reasonable to propose that microgravity could prevent the progression of a disease.

As an example, Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva is a rare, inherited condition of excessive, improper bone growth. Essentially, whenever the body is wounded, bone is grown at the wound instead of normal tissue. The result is that the patient slowly turns to bone. Surgical procedures to remove the bone only make things worse as the body heals the incisions with more bone growth. There is no known treatment or cure. Now, bone loss is a major issue for astronauts spending prolonged periods of time in space. Part of the problem is likely the reduced requirement for the muscles and bones to hold the weight of the body, but some researchers think there may be molecular mechanisms governing bone growth that are sensitive to the gravity and don't work in space. Potentially a microgravity environment could inhibit further bone growth. There are many things we don't know about microgravity's effects on our body, so I think it is definitely possible that Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva could be helped by a microgravity environment.

Answer 2

The disease needn't be a virus -- it could be a larger parasite organism attacking the host. Once you've established that the person is under attack from a parasite, all you need is to invent a creature that dies in zero gravity.

For example, human immune cells can't mature in zero gravity. A creature whose cells needed to be regrown more frequently than ours might not be able to survive long in such an environment.

Answer 3

Malignant obesity hypoventilation syndrome.

from A case report of malignant obesity hypoventilation syndrome: A weighty problem in our ICUs

CASE PRESENTATION: 35 year old African American gentleman with a body mass index (BMI) of 115 kg/m2 presented to the hospital with respiratory distress. On admission he was noted to have multi-organ dysfunction including respiratory failure, renal failure, cardiac and liver abnormalities. His hospital course was remarkable for recurrent cardiac arrest following extubation, complicated tracheostomy, and progressive organ failure despite medical therapy. After a 30 day hospitalization, patient and family decided on terminal extubation owing to worsening medical condition and lack of therapeutic and disposition options. DISCUSSION: The super obese present a number of challenges when admitted to the ICU. Patients with respiratory distress are frequently misdiagnosed and treated for asthma and COPD when obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS) is more consistent with the clinical picture. OHS in the superobese is often accompanied by multi-system organ dysfunction, a condition with high morbidity and mortality, with limited treatment options.

From the article; this man was 182 cm, 383 kg (844 lbs). The weight of the body crushes the lungs and makes it more and more difficult to breathe. It is much the same situation as marine mammals which are on land and do not have the water to support them.

In zero-G this mega-rich person would not have to move the weight of his body while breathing. He would probably feel great.

While writing this I was thinking of Iz who died of complications of obesity. I bet the water made it easier for him. Too bad he did not have a space station.

Answer 4

To get use of such low gravity, person with that rare disease needs to survive

• the stress of astronaut training (which might be a challenge - presumably rich person would not bother if he was in good enough shape)
• the high-G stress of launch.

Contradiction in requirements.

Wikipedia says that Shuttle had 3G acceleration, which is LESS than high-G roller-coaster. So I guess it should be safe enough (survivable) to launch him up using shuttle, with some risk.

NASA article about acceleration says: "The human body can tolerate violent accelerations for short periods, including the the prolonged high-g acceleration necessary to reach Earth orbit." ..."Heavy acceleration is a speeded-up aging process. Tissues break down, capillaries break down and the heart has to do many times its proper work."

So answer is like always it depends - in big part on what kind of (undefined) launch vehicle you plan to use. The gentler the better. Now you have framework to ask for more questions to make your story more plausible.