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Asked by Olidatguy to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 9 Nov 2014.
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Alex Pool answered on 9 Nov 2014:
Wow hard question!
The first thing I’d want to understand is how the disease spreads, so if it’s infectious or something like cancer which isn’t. That way you can work to ensure that other people don’t catch it.
Part of that would be understanding what actually causes it, such as a virus, parasite, bacteria. By understanding that scientists can then start to think of a method to fight it.
If it’s caused by any of those then you’d need to understand its life cycle, how it grows. If you understand part of that and can identify what is vital for it to grow then you can start to design drugs that work to stop that, killing it.
You’d need a lot of people all working together to try and stop it as quickly as possible.
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Alison Thomson answered on 10 Nov 2014:
Aaaaahhhhhh!!!! Quick! Everyone panic!!!
No, not really =P
I think I would start by finding out what was causing the disease i.e. virus, bacteria, genetic mutation etc, and then I would compare it to other diseases that we already have a cure for. You never know – if there’s a similar disease, we might be able to cure it in a similar way!
It would also be pretty handy to find out if it’s contagious!
After that, depending on what type of disease it is, I’d cure it!
If it was a disease caused by an invading bacteria, I would work out how to kill it without killing ourselves.
If it was a genetic mutation I would try to do some gene therapy (where you find out what genetic information is missing, and then put it back in the body).Like Alex says though – it would take a huge team of scientists all working together, so I hope there’s a super rich person at the top who’s willing to pay for all of this work!
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