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Old 07-11-2020, 06:31 PM   #31
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
As for drugs rather than food, it's true that drugs are addressed in the rules by Unusual Biochemistry and food by Restricted Diet. But that's a question of game mechanics. In terms of real world causality, having different biochemistry would tend to be reflected in both.

And in portraying Martians as able to drink human blood, Wells seems to be assuming an incredibly high level of convergent evolution. His Martians seemingly use iron-based respiratory pigments, for example, and there are no proteins in human blood that are toxic or allergenic to them. That may not be biologically realistic (though we won't know how much evolution actually converges until we have studied the biospheres of a few other planets; before then it's all theory, which both Aristotle and Doyle warn against relying on too much)—but it's a venerable precedent in science fiction.
I very much disagree here.

Dietary requirements and molecular drug targets are almost completely orthogonal. Even if we assume we won't be dealing with outright autotrophs it's perfectly realistic to be able to produce any given key biological feedstock from basic, common, and flexible starting materials. (Though it's probably realistic to expect naturally-evolved heterotrophic higher organisms to have accumulated some auxotrophies that are covered by their normal diet.)

You could have an almost completely different biochemistry but use the exact same basic nutrients as a human, or you could (though probably not naturally) contrive to have almost completely human biochemistry but require a very special diet...even one that would be toxic or unnourishing to a normal human.


While the notion of alien biochemistry tending to be randomly and accidentally inimical definitely has some pedigree in SF, I find it generally doubtful. Natural toxins are highly purposeful (in the sense that that applies to evolved features.) Our world is full of things that have been heavily selected to harm us or creatures similar to us. A biochemically different alien biota is full of things that have never in their entire evolutionary history had any possibility of being selected for ability to poison a Terran mammal. I'd be a lot less afraid to ingest any sort of alien sample than a random unidentified mushroom grabbed out of the woods.

Immunology is more of a mystery box than toxicology, but if there was a convenient epitope that reliably killed humans with anaphylaxis I'd still say we'd be more likely to encounter it weaponized at home than randomly present in someone else's nature. (Which isn't to say that particular humans having or developing allergies to particular alien molecules would be unlikely.)


If the description of the Martians I've found is correct, they did not and could not drink blood...they subsisted exclusively by transfusing blood from other species. To be a bit obvious, that's extremely weird. I'd think it suggests some major similarities of biochemistry (for them to be able to survive with a circulatory system full of human blood), and some major divergence (to be able to wring a useful amount of nourishment out of that...or to survive with a circulatory system full of non-human blood!)
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Old 07-11-2020, 07:11 PM   #32
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
No, it doesn't, but it doesn't forbid it. It's a basic point of logic that "if A, then B" is consistent with either "not A and B" or "not A and not B."

As for drugs rather than food, it's true that drugs are addressed in the rules by Unusual Biochemistry and food by Restricted Diet. But that's a question of game mechanics. In terms of real world causality, having different biochemistry would tend to be reflected in both.

And in portraying Martians as able to drink human blood, Wells seems to be assuming an incredibly high level of convergent evolution. His Martians seemingly use iron-based respiratory pigments, for example, and there are no proteins in human blood that are toxic or allergenic to them. That may not be biologically realistic (though we won't know how much evolution actually converges until we have studied the biospheres of a few other planets; before then it's all theory, which both Aristotle and Doyle warn against relying on too much)—but it's a venerable precedent in science fiction.
It's more likely that he was assuming that life on the two planets had a common source. Panspermia is a lot more likely between two planets in the same solar system.
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Old 07-11-2020, 07:19 PM   #33
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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It's more likely that he was assuming that life on the two planets had a common source. Panspermia is a lot more likely between two planets in the same solar system.
I don't think "common source" does it. Humans and molluscs have a common source, a lot more recent than bacteria or the like, but we use hemoglobin and a lot of them use hemocyanin.
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Old 07-11-2020, 08:56 PM   #34
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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I don't think "common source" does it. Humans and molluscs have a common source, a lot more recent than bacteria or the like, but we use hemoglobin and a lot of them use hemocyanin.
Being transfusion-compatible with both humans and at least one species of martian animal (livestock?) is a lot more of a stretch than just the coincidence of using (or tolerating) heme-based oxygen carriers. Martians are weird. Probably heavily engineered.
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Old 07-12-2020, 05:45 AM   #35
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Being transfusion-compatible with both humans and at least one species of martian animal (livestock?) is a lot more of a stretch than just the coincidence of using (or tolerating) heme-based oxygen carriers. Martians are weird. Probably heavily engineered.
Well, that's one way to approach it. But my own preference is to accept premises that have problems or no longer make sense in terms of present-day science, such as Lowellian "ancient, dying Mars" or the alchemical reanimation of dead tissues, as if they were true on their own terms, rather than trying to rationalize them in terms of present-day science. And after all, as far as GURPS mechanics is concerned, we don't need to come up with a scientific explanation; we just have to describe the observed facts game mechanically.
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Old 07-12-2020, 12:52 PM   #36
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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Well, that's one way to approach it. But my own preference is to accept premises that have problems or no longer make sense in terms of present-day science, such as Lowellian "ancient, dying Mars" or the alchemical reanimation of dead tissues, as if they were true on their own terms, rather than trying to rationalize them in terms of present-day science. And after all, as far as GURPS mechanics is concerned, we don't need to come up with a scientific explanation; we just have to describe the observed facts game mechanically.
I'm not sure how 'martians have weird and unnatural biology' is rejecting the premise. The book doesn't present any sort of extensive knowledge about martian biology, but it does speculate that the martians had eliminated all diseases on Mars so long ago they didn't even remember the concept. That is, they've been very advanced and willing to make very radical changes for a long time.

My suggestion that an organism with no digestive organs that survives by technologically transfusing itself with alien blood didn't evolve to that state in nature is my own and I can't summon up the ghost of Wells to run it by him, but it seems entirely consistent with what we do know about them and within the scope of imagination at the time.

I'm not sure what framework of late 19th century biochemistry you're suggesting we prefer for guiding our extrapolations. As far as I know there's zero canonical information about the consequences of dosing Martians with human drugs, so neither Unusual Biochemistry nor a lack of Unusual Biochemistry can be a matter of simply describing the observed facts.
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Old 07-12-2020, 01:47 PM   #37
Tyneras
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

The War of the Worlds was written (1898) before the discovery of human blood groups (1901). So at the time it was written blood transfusion was risky and regarded as highly dubious. So the martian blood transfusions are as magical as the star trek warp drive.

As far as using Unusual Biochemistry, in my own games it tends to be restricted to strange mutant one-offs, things that don't have a proper medical tradition. For example, elves might have very different medicine than humans or orcs, but they don't have UB because they can go to an elven village to get proper medicine. That one elf who touched the Doom Crystal though, he has UB because who knows what will happen when he takes an elf aspirin.
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Old 07-12-2020, 02:49 PM   #38
whswhs
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I'm not sure how 'martians have weird and unnatural biology' is rejecting the premise. The book doesn't present any sort of extensive knowledge about martian biology, but it does speculate that the martians had eliminated all diseases on Mars so long ago they didn't even remember the concept. That is, they've been very advanced and willing to make very radical changes for a long time.

My suggestion that an organism with no digestive organs that survives by technologically transfusing itself with alien blood didn't evolve to that state in nature is my own and I can't summon up the ghost of Wells to run it by him, but it seems entirely consistent with what we do know about them and within the scope of imagination at the time.
It seems to me that Wells thought of his Martians as very much like the likely future state of human evolution, consisting of brain, eyes, ears, hands, and just enough body to serve them. I don't see much indication that he thought they had genetically engineered themselves to consume blood; genetic engineering wasn't on his conceptual horizon. You have to remember that Mendel's work had fallen into obscurity when he wrote, and had not yet been rediscovered. And when he wants to show alterations in humans or animals, he shows surgical vivisection (and apparently Beast Men made from different species can have offspring!), elaborate treatment of the tissues to bleach them, and dosing with a growth substance of some sort; there's nothing about changing their heredity. On the other hand, I could see him thinking that once the Martians developed the technology of injecting blood into themselves, natural selection would cause their digestive systems to atrophy and stop burdening their metabolisms, just as it caused cave animals' eyes to disappear; he clearly is thinking along those lines in showing us the childlike, epicene Eloi.

I'm not suggesting that "Martians have weird biology" is in any way contrary to Wells's point (nor am I discussing, here, what rule to use to represent it). I'm just saying that for us to say "Well, there would be problems of serum compatibility here, and you'd need elaborate genetic engineering to overcome them" is thinking in terms that weren't known when Wells wrote (compare the nearly contemporary Dracula, with Lucy receiving transfusions from several different untested donors and not having any problems); Wells wouldn't have been trying to avoid those issues in his narrative because they weren't well known. If I were representing this in game I wouldn't come up with some argument about biochemistry or immunology or genetics; I'd handwave the issue, as not in period.

In GURPS terms, on one hand, I think that transfusing oneself with human blood is just a specialized form of eating; on the other, if you have to have blood, I'd call it Restricted Diet, probably Common (since the blood of virgins is Occasional). Being able to work with widely disparate blood sources is kind of like Universal Digestion, but kind of not, since it doesn't work with organic substances other than blood.
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