Quick, here’s your assignment–design a way to kill someone. It should be efficient, effective, and virtually unstoppable. Time is not a factor. It can be a swift death or a long one, drawn out over many years (the more suffering the better). It should be painful, its very name inspiring terror amongst even the bravest. It must present itself to the medical community as an unsolvable puzzle. It should affect every person in a completely different and unique way, spreading throughout their systems with complete unpredictability. The progression may vary, but the end result will be a literal wasting away from the inside out. It must not be contagious as that would allow scientists and physicians to monitor its spread. There will be much speculation as to its causes, but you need to be extremely wily and keep these hidden from the intense scrutiny of the most brilliant minds.
While destruction of the physical body is of utmost importance, your task does not end there. It is equally vital that your creation be absolutely soul-crushing in the cruelest possible ways. Its development should be possible from the earliest ages through the entire life span. No one should feel totally safe. There will be no guaranteed prevention, immunization, or inoculation. You might even decide to divide it into hundreds of different forms so that those in the medical community will be even more confounded. That way their time and resources will have to be allocated to just those strands that they feel are the most perplexing and destructive. The cost of your project on society at large will number in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It will divide doctors and legislators against one another as they will be constantly scrambling to make sure they are following the latest trends as one form gets more media attention and, therefore, more public outcry for effective treatments. It will eventually affect everyone in some way, with no exceptions.
The only treatments available will be just as brutal as the illness itself. People afflicted will endure being cut upon, burned, and even poisoned in desperate, vain attempts to rid their bodies of the dreaded malady, all to little or no avail. Some people undergoing such procedures will be informed that they are cured, only to find several years later that the doctors were mistaken and did not completely eradicate the root cause, thus beginning the terrible cycle all over again. Parents will tear out their hair, screaming at God and cursing a world where their young child could incomprehensibly be diagnosed and condemned to such cruelty and suffering in what should be the innocence of their youth. Your creation will be so powerful that it will stretch people to the limits of their faith and cause some to abandon it entirely. The fallout will be tremendous.
Lastly, but most importantly, is the component of emotional suffering. If this illness were all-encompassing, if there was never any light at the end of the tunnel, people would at least be able to accept fate and embrace their suffering. The most crucial component, therefore, is hope. Everyone afflicted and affected must have ample reassurances that they should expect that things will get better–that they or their loved one can be cured. In fact, a select few should be able to beat it completely, but only after they have suffered sufficiently. This will perpetuate the belief that it can be conquered by most. Precious hope must be given and taken away so many times that it tortures people to madness and beyond. Sufferers should be days from death and still clinging to the fantasy that everything will be okay. In short, your method should entail the prolonged and absolute obliteration of the body, mind, and spirit.
Think you can handle that? Oh, you already have something there? Let me see it. Hmm, I like it.
Let’s call it cancer.
Christopher