https://aldoralau.wixsite.com/miraprogram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGj9VdiyKHk&t=22s
Project Brief: Design a New Drug its uses, and it's external components
Project Duration: 5 weeks
Rationale
At the beginning, my initial idea was exactly what I ended up doing, I’m not a pessimist, but I wouldn’t call myself an optimist either. The facts are that humans as a whole will not even consider change their behaviour until the threat is imminent, it’s just biology, so many of my initial concepts were distopian.
But I thought of prescribed and manufactured medicine to be generally bad; where on the surface, the drugs suppress the symptoms,, but the side effects it has on our bodies are generally not worth the temporary relief, not to mention the after effect of the suppressed ailments. So I tried very hard to think of something that was benevolent, altruistic, and genuinely good.
They were all boring, my heart wasn’t in them, or rather I didn’t really believe in them. But as a 26 year old Chinese woman, having a child has been on my mind for a very long time. I don’t particularly know whether I want a child or not; which probably indicates that I should not and am not ready for one, but as pressures from both sides of our families come, it’s inevitable to think about it. I think about if I had a child or children, how I should raise them? am I fit physically? mentally? emotionally? Is it even ethical to increase population when there are already too many people? and many more questions; TLDR I am none of those things.
Heres the controversial part; I also do not think that most parents are in my terms “fit” to become parents, and many of them are not taught or do not self-inform. The question is, whether it really is a human privilege to have children? Obviously I believed that people need to prove they are actually worthy of caring, nurturing, loving a life from start to finish, no sick days, no bail outs etc. so yeah, this is how the project came to be...
The Mira program, is set in a world in 2073 where radiation levels have gone so far up from the waste output and excessive consumption of resources, that humans have become sterile. That seems fine and all, and for many a relief (no more birth control, condoms etc), but with no new population, is the beginning of the end, the population, like current Japan, will have more elderly than young working class. The elderly need care from the working class, but there just aren’t enough people in that age group, and slowly that is one of the ways populations go extinct.
For this scenario to work, there needs to be some kind of ... put badly, conformity, sugar coated, social understanding, the vision is that technological, philosophical, social, scientific, and civil advancement should basically be at it’s peak, but this is not that far in the future, and to get there there had to be a cost, which was excessive waste.
On gender.... This is another thing that I think I shouldn’t think, but do, so here goes: gender is a label, an organizational tool to separate and rationalize. Why are pronouns assigned to our identity when they are just descriptive terms? Boiled down, they are just adjectives; therefore, shouldn’t pronouns be used as a literary term rather than an identity label? Are pronouns a belief ? A faith? A religion? Why do we compartmentalize ourselves more when we are trying to reach equality. Thinking this, I propose a new use of pronouns; that they are what they are: adjectives, and “gender” to be referred to as the individual’s sex, their reproductive system inside their body, and here birthed the terms: Ovium (female) and Pavium (male).
So, the drug, it’s a fertility drug, it’s IV administered drug, where the Ovarium (Ovium) host will receive BBR3464, and the Spermatozoon (Pavium) host will receive ZD0473, the drug names are derrived from existing drugs that also target the ovaries and prostate, but not for fertility reasons. The drug resets the body’s homonal and biological chemicals and redirect 60% of all resources to the reproductive system, setting the proper Ph levels, the optimal body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate for successful contraception.
The IV has to be administered throughout the contraceptive and pregnancy phases, and therefore needs to be monitored at all times by an overseer. This is obviously an expensive process, so not everyone that has a whim that they want children can do it.
This is where the aptitude tests comes in, I would also say this is all theoretical, so don’t burn me at the stake. But THEORETICALLY, candidates would undergo comprehensive psychological and physiological aptitude testing to ensure that the child thrives in the environment given and is a productive member of society. There are 9 phases, this is in obvious reflection to the 9 months of human pregnancy. And the tests are hard, most of them at least, and, in a way, I think they should be hard...
The phases:
Phase 1: independent application of intent
Phase 2: extensive health questionnaire; to be filled out with family doctor
Phase 3: physical health exam, preformed by Mira Doctor
Phase 4: DNA testing, mostly for genetic and hereditary disorders, but a fair and unbiased approach to genetic diversifying the population, would help int he resilience of a species.
Phase 5: psychological evaluations
Phase 6: physical aptitude testing
Phase 7: nuturing aptitude testing
Phase 8: social aptitude testing
Phase 9: empathy and aptitude testing using observational data on an individual’s response
Language: I don’t believe that the future global language is English, nor any other language that exists currently, I predict that it will be somewhat reminiscent of the language that we have now, but mixed together and altered. The presentation ai voice over in my presentation is in the language that I made up with english subtitles at the bottom.
In hindsight what would you have done differently?
I would’ve liked to add more caveats and measures for the genetic diversity part of the aptitude testing. Also the blood sample label could look better...
I would’ve also like to send out some real test surveys to the class and create a physical experience of how difficult these tests are. The results of who passed, and failed may actually surprise us.
