The sudden arrival of the coronavirus across the world
from its source in China in a matter of a few months was a surprise to
everybody. But it was no surprise to those you could term as being “in the
know” since they had long predicted such an event. So whilst the world was
focussed upon the subject of climate change, just as significant but less
speedy, this suddenly caught the world off guard. Back in 2018 at Davos, Sylvie
Briand, an infectious disease specialist at the World Health Organisation, said
that the next great pandemic was coming, that we were more vulnerable than ever
and we had no way to stop it. In 2019 at a health conference Bill Gates
declared that a virus could easily appear that could kill 30 million people.
But at the time these predictions fell on deaf ears with the world focussed
upon climate change.
So if were are a digital human and the coronavirus is a
digital virus why were we not ready for it in terms of using Artificial Intelligence (AI). The vision I have is why as soon as the virus genome arrived
in my email inbox from China could I not just copy it into my AI based
vaccine designer and out the other side popped the genome for the required
vaccine. Send this off the vaccine factory and within hours we could have million
shots of vaccine. Job done. Pandemic stopped before it started.
Well the fact is in 2020 we did not have this vaccine
designer. But I would bet money on us having one by 2030 if not earlier. The
costs both in terms of human life and economic loss are such that the
investments will now be made to build this relatively simple program to process from a virus to a vaccine. But it is not just the writing of a new program. We need to go further and invest in a whole new more powerful computer architecture called Quantum Computing. We cannot afford not to do so. But
could we have been better prepared now in 2020. Possibly since the seeds of artificial intelligence have already been sown within the existing digital architecture and we could have dedicated all the world's computers to the task to acquire the power needed. So what needed to be done.
Well I am not in the vaccine making world either academic
or pharmaceutical but I do know if Google can decide which paint I should
purchase to paint my fences then deciding on which vaccine to treat a virus
should be straightforward. Google have my painting buying history over the last
few years. They can see when I have changed brands. They can see which brand I
have settled on buying that best suits my fences. They can predict what I will
purchase next. They are likely to be right. They have masses of historical data
and my purchasing outcomes. In fact they can do this for all my purchases not
just fence paint. They have applied artificial intelligence to retailing. So why not apply it to vaccine creation?
So this is artificial intelligence (AI) stepping back
over masses of previous stored historical data and at the same time being able
to see what the outcomes of this data were at different times. So you are
recording the data before and behind the final result. But you have the
opportunity to see what the result was in the real world based upon this stored
data. Having established this link between the data and the result you have
established what has been termed an artificial intelligence algorithm. In fact
the algorithm is just representing in computer code how you may do it manually.
Stepping through the data deciding where certain patterns in the data are say
more common so more likely to result in the outcome than other patterns that
are less common. So how could we have made more use of this capability?
So the use of vaccines has been around for some time.
Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823) developed the smallpox vaccine. Jenner noted that
milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox so he scraped pus from the cowpox
blisters of a milkmaid who had caught cowpox and inoculated an 8 year old boy
with it. He then injected the boy with some virus, but only a little bit, taken
from someone with smallpox. No smallpox disease triggered. He then tested 23
additional subjects. The vaccine based upon cowpox worked. Good practical non
digital chemical experimentation only involving putting an 8 year old boy at risk. No Health and Safety rules to worry about in those days.
Now it’s a simple step to digitally establish the digital
genome for smallpox, although only a few labs retain this dangerous virus, and
then to digitally establish the genome for the cowpox vaccine used. Do not get confused by the term genome since all it means is a complete digital map of something. Similar to a Google map but of biological things. Both the Google map and the genome are just millions and millions of bits, like light bulbs, either switched on or off. You can create
an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that runs through the smallpox genome
to see how the patterns in the bits (on or off) within it link to the patterns within the cowpox
vaccine bits. But this is just one disease and one vaccine.
Now share a vision of taking every disease we know and
every vaccine we have ever created to successfully stop the spread of the
disease. So thousands of diseases and thousands of vaccines. Now we all know
that diseases and their viruses come in different flavours. These flavours have
been categorised. By categorising them together you can establish in more
detail the patterns that link the virus to the vaccine. We know coronavirus is
of one particular category, call it spikey, so we have to group all these related types together since they are related in the way they have
evolved by mutation. So if it is all so easy why has it not been done?
Well it is not that easy. Think of it down at the atom
level within these viruses and their possible vaccines. Firstly there is a lot
of data just for one little virus. There is also a lot of data for one little
vaccine. But it is never that simple because we have a third dataset to
consider. The human genome. This human genome introduces the body’s own defence
system with the anti- bodies as another dataset. These are the body’s own
soldiers to fight off the virus. Unfortunately they can also attack your own
working body parts in what are called auto-immune diseases. A sort of human own goal
situation.
So we have a virus genome, a vaccine genome, various anti - body genomes and then this enormous human genome that they all live within at the same time.
They are all interdependent on each other all doing things within the body. Its
one enormous chemical process which put simply is your life. Now we are taking
about the digital representation of this whole chemical process.
But it goes further than just considering one life. To support
defining an artificial intelligence algorithm linking virus to vaccine will
require thousands of life examples. These being different human genomes. Now conventional computers based upon
digital technologies, that’s binary on and off, are unlikely to be powerful
enough to process this type of multi-dimensional artificial intelligence. The
next level of computing hardware is based upon the principles of Quantum
Computers. So we may need to fund the move towards Quantum Computers before we
can finance their use for the digital vaccine generator. But it something we
need to start doing now.
I think for any author like me trying to establish some
new way of thinking or paradigm it is often some unexpected event that gives
credibility to your idea. Now I am not a biological expert but I am a digital
expert. I am attempting to apply my digital expertise to a biological subject.
It’s a fact that the experts in the biological field have understood this
concept of a digital human over the last 20 years or so if not before. Through
their research and research papers running throughout their community, which
with the internet, is both global and instantaneous they understand only too
well what I am writing about. This is not the audience for this book. My reader
audience is everybody outside this what I have termed biological community. It
is getting the message across to everybody else.
When I have sat face to face and tried to explain what I
mean by being a digital human with me often saying we are “no different to a
smartphone” the listener more often than not goes blank and soon loses
interest. They know a smartphone is inorganic. It is not living so the
comparison seems futile. Now if I qualify it with the fact that the digital has
to be run through a process that converts it into organic chemicals before it
can live the digital human concept sounds a bit more plausible. So the digital
human is really just a complex set of instructions for the making of a real
human. But seeing it this way is very different from looking at electron
microscope images of living organisms. The conversion is no different to the
digital code that is converted to become a YouTube video. It is just in this
case the conversion is through biological processes something that most of us
that have not worked in a modern biological laboratory would not have
witnessed. The nearest we would have come to it is cooking from a recipe in the
kitchen. Being particularly relevant when the cooking involves the use of
yeast.
So what was this significant event? On the 10th
January 2020 probably one of the most significant emails in respect of saving
the world from the Coronavirus virus landed in the biological communities email
inboxes via an open community contacts list. It was what is termed an open
access paper for the use of everybody. It was titled “Wuhan seafood market
pneumonia virus isolate Wuhan-HU-1, complete genome.” To an outsider it
contained 30,000 apparently jumbled letters but this was the digital design of
the virus. Within this paper was the whole genome with all the secrets of the
virus there to decode so experts could start working on the design of the best
immediate anti-bodies to treat it and then for the design of a vaccine for use
in immunisation programmes.
As someone who has had his career in the digital
industries very much in the corporate world using expensive paid for software
and now in retirement dependant on the free open systems software so readily
available and I have to say now well supported this was a triumph in the powers
of digital technology. In the Sars. outbreak scientists were secretive with
their data and withheld research papers concerned about getting due credit for
their work. Also the journal research paper distribution industry was concerned
about exclusivity and the avoidance of plagiarism. All built in vast time
delays With Coronavirus all publishers have agreed to the immediate publication
of all papers and that such papers would not jeopardise any future work of the
author should the contents be less credible under longer term scrutiny. This is
a true open systems approach very much adopted from way the computer open
systems community has operated for many years. This change in approach is
needed since there could be worse to come.
To the south of Wuhan in China chickens are densely
packed wing to wing and a avian flu called H5N1 has incubated in these
conditions. It has transferred to humans and has a 60% chance of causing death.
It has not transferred human to human yet but we all know the speed at which
viruses mutate.
Today this Digital Human has been invaded by some digital
invaders. Not sure when they first invaded my body and how they got there?
Suspect they floated into my respiratory system probably sitting on top of some
tiny water droplets. They probably settled inside my lungs and were hopefully
attacked by my own immune system’s army of digital guards. But unfortunately my
digital guards failed so I am sitting here poorly. They read the gene code
inside the digital invader looked inside their own defence’s tool box of gene digital
remedies and could not find one to match exactly for an attack. Or maybe it was
a numbers game and the number of invaders multiplied at a rate that could not
match the number of my own digital guards. Anyway they are certainly winning.
With the coronavirus spreading across the world from China and threatening a
world pandemic not the time to be experiencing these symptoms. But unlike the
fiendishly clever coronavirus, which as the name says on the tin is a virus, I believe
mine to be a very dumb bacteria lacking much gene digital cunning.
The digital human provides a suitable envelope of skin for
many types of micro-organisms that live happily inside you normally not causing
you any problems. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast and protozoa live inside as
well as some bigger things like animal parasites like insects, worms and
flukes. It’s a wonder you don’t charge them rent. They are happy to move person
to person by direct contact or the inhalation of infected air. Plus they can
get inside by you eating and drinking contaminated food and drink. You provide
a “home” to many of these types of micro-organisms and provided they pay the
rent and they don’t cause me any adverse symptoms they are welcome. It would be
nice to have a list of all these digital tenants so I can see who is on board
at any one time. In fact the medical profession are not far off being able to
produce this complete list now for a digital human.
Now bacteria are the simplest of digital devices. Under a
microscope they are single cell with a protective wall. Digitally they are very
simple with a gene or two within them. Some are a bit more complex in that they
are aerobic where they require oxygen so their digital coding has to be a bit
more complex with a few more genes. Others are anaerobic and they can survive
in oxygen free surroundings like within the bowel and in poo itself. Bacteria
can release toxins in their own poo which can generate symptoms by in fact
poisoning you through your blood system. Also the area of you around the
bacteria can become inflamed as your digital guards fight their battles with
the invaders which can affect the working of your organs.
Viruses are smaller than bacteria whilst being a lot more
digitally capable with a lot more genes. I am not going to say intelligent but rather
that the imbedded processes are more sophisticated. If you like they have a
more complex looping digital program. So they have more genes. With these being
more complex genes stored within a more robust protein coated outer layer. Now
this complexity means they can only reproduce within a living cell by using the
hosts replicating digital code. All together a much more complex arrangement
with some networking capabilities with the host’s digital cell genes. Some data
sharing in fact.
Now bacteria and viruses have been around a lot longer
than us. In fact the chemical components that built them went on to be more
complex and built us up to be a digital human. It is believed RNA that formed
the first digital components that came together before the more complex DNA was
evolved from the RNA. A virus takes us back to the purest form of life. Back to
the base components of digital life. They have no cell and no brain so they are
just working to inbuilt pre-programmed gene logic that essentially are mainly
reproduction processes. It is an effective reproduction machine. A silver of
genetic material inside a thin protective shell with the sole purpose of making
copies of itself. It wants to use me as the home it lives within to make copies
of itself. It has no malevolent instincts it does not want to kill you because
if it does the virus dies with you. Ideally a virus wants to keep you alive so
it does not want to be too deadly. If it were to be too deadly it ends its
ability to reproduce by dying inside the first victim. Whilst if it only causes
a mild sniffle it can go on to conquer the world.
Now the problem with viruses are two fold in that they
are both more sophisticated than bacteria but also able to mutate very quickly
to look to improve their chances of survival. This is indicative of their RNA
makeup which operates very effectively to make changes based upon direct
feedback from other parts of the body.
Protozoa are single celled parasites and they are
slightly bigger than bacteria. Many protozoa live in the human intestine and
are harmless. Although other types of protozoa cause malaria, sleeping sickness
and dysentery.
