Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  “Not well...”

  “Not very good. Sir.”

  “…Sir.” Two of them answered at once. The other two who did not answer immediately dropped to the floor in agony as their tags were activated.

  Synster waited for them to get up and sit back down on the couch. “And why do you think your people are not doing well?” he asked looking at Jogger, one of the two that had just been on the floor.

  Knowing he must answer, he started, “They…” He glanced around. “We, eat too much, watch too much TV, and don’t exercise enough?” Jogger winced, turned his head and tightened his body, preparing for pain.

  Looking at all of them, Synster asked, “And what medication should be prescribed to such a person who eats too much, watches TV, and doesn’t exercise?”

  “Well, none. Medication is for diseases and disorders,” responded Suit.

  “So are you telling me that the people of your country are not doing well because of diseases and disorders, or are not doing well because of daily habits around the house?”

  “Diseases and disorders,” they all agreed nodding theirs heads again, apparently in mutual agreement.

  “Do they get diseases from not exercising?”

  “It’s a contributing factor, yes,” said another, with confidence building.

  “From watching TV?” Synster continued.

  “It contributes to weight gain because they’re not exercising and probably eating junk while they watch,” said another, looking at his colleagues, who appeared to agree.

  “Eating too much?”

  “Yes, it contributes to weight gain. Eating the wrong things, then complications from there,” parroted another, trying to contribute.

  “So all the life habits that can be changed are what give most of your people poor health?”

  They could suddenly see where he was headed and didn’t like it, but they were trapped. “Yes?” Synster asked and they all nodded agreement reluctantly.

  “So what you’re telling me, then, is that watching TV, eating too much, and not exercising is caused by a deficiency of pharmaceutical drugs? Because your solution to rid your people of these causes of disease appears to be to add drugs to their systems in the hope that the causes will be driven out.”

  Synster let the question hover in the air like a vulture watching its victims grope toward a thimble of water in the blazing heat of the Sahara. He wanted them to understand the implications of their decisions and actions. The men squirmed in their seats as David and Rick watched, just glad they weren’t a part of this interrogation.

  “Why do you think you can interrupt peoples’ natural systems with the introduction of simple chemicals and have their health improve?” Synster asked softly. “You don’t even understand how intricate their systems are. Do you think you have a more comprehensive grasp of the details of human physiological survival than do millions of years of evolution?” He waited for an answer. “Well, do you?”

  No one answered. The four of them gaped while David raised his hand like a middle-school student. Synster did not acknowledge him. He waited for an answer. “Well?” Still no one answered.

  He zapped the four on the couch. When they were done writhing on the floor, Synster commanded, “Well?” They all glanced at David and raised their hands. Synster pointed to Pink Slippers, the one closest to David, and commanded, “Answer!”

  “We are not smarter than millions of years of evolution. We were just trying to do our best,” he replied, then closed both his eyes tightly and slowly opened one, waiting for a possible punishment.

  “Then why would you not try to work with the systems of the human body first, giving it all the benefits of a good nutritional and active environment, allowing for natural processes to correct ailments?”

  They all looked at each other for an answer. They knew they didn’t want to feel the pain of the tag again and four hands went up.

  “You.” Synster pointed at Hangover.

  “We thought the disease process was the natural process, inevitable.” He trembled slightly as he looked around nervously and the others looked at him. He realized that maybe he shouldn’t speak for the others and corrected himself. “At least, I, thought that might be the case.”

  Synster didn’t react. “But everyone here just agreed that major contributing factors of diseases were a sedentary life and eating too much of the wrong thing, so why is something inevitable if it can be changed? What about you?” he asked pointing to the others. “Do you think the disease process is a natural process?”

  They all shook their heads, indicating the negative. Then Suit raised his hand and bravely stated, “Not anymore, we mean, I mean. Obviously you’re a man of conviction,” he said, trying to cater favor.

  “Man! Did you call me a man?” Synster raged. “You are a chimpanzee compared to me!”

  Synster zapped Pink Slippers again because he didn’t like his clothes and wanted to instill random terror.

  “Listen to me, you idiots! Natural selection does not serve its purpose by propagating weakness. Chronic illness is not a natural process. How many millions of wild deer have autoimmune disease? How about zero! And with your tremendous intelligent contributions, how many millions of humans have autoimmune disease. How about hundreds of millions. You have made the grave error of believing that you have some kind of knowledge that rivals your body’s knowledge of itself. You add your little compounds to systems and think you are observing the results. Your observations don’t even approach the true effects on the entire system. You tinker with relationships that you should completely comprehend by now, but you don’t. You investigate the causes of your diseases, and you do it with the elegance of your medieval witch hunts.”

  These leaders of our nation’s health care system gaped at Synster while casting occasional glances at Rick and David, wondering why they were escaping the focus of wrath and interrogation.

  “You humans disgust me with your arrogance,” Synster accused, feeling a twinge of hypocrisy with the statement. He paced and thought about all the issues he had with the way humans approach their health. Too many to cover, too many to try to understand. “If a person has an infection,” he began, “and their white blood cell count goes up to fight the infection, would you give them a medication that destroys their body’s ability to make white blood cells?” Synster glared at them, waiting for an answer.

  No one answered until he raised his gauntlet, ready to give them pain. They all seemed confused about such a simple question. They thought it was another trap.

  “No, no, we wouldn’t,” they all answered in almost perfect unison.

  “Then if a person is experiencing inflammation and their liver produces cholesterol as a reaction to fight it, would you advocate a medication that inhibits the liver from making that cholesterol?”

  Rick knew this was a big sticking point with Synster. It was a medication that too many of his “cattle” took. Too many people took this one drug that damaged the whole system, poisoning their flesh and organs, making them unfit for Provenger consumption. But Rick wasn’t really sure what bothered Synster more. Was it the destruction of his crop, or was it the fact that the humans’ own research had disproven the lipid hypothesis and was ignored by professionals responsible for this issue?

  The captives all looked at him wide eyed and mute. They all knew that cholesterol was the body’s lubricant. They all knew that the liver made cholesterol as a response to inflammation, that it protected cells and allowed cellular metabolism to function normally. But they didn’t want to admit it because they knew where he was headed, and they didn’t want to go there.

  “Answer me!” Synster yelled. He gave them another zap. When they got up off the floor again, he told them they had three seconds to answer.

  Jogger sheepishly raised his hand and said, “No, I wouldn’t want to inhibit the body’s production of cholesterol to fight the effects of inflammation.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Synster
said as he put Suit under a number of jolts of pain.

  When he crawled up off the floor, Suit asked in a whiny panic, “Why did you hit me?”

  “Because you didn’t answer, and I can’t stand pinstripe!” Synster added, “You people don’t seem to get it. I want answers.”

  Rick watched the spectacle before him in silence. He felt for these men, but he thought them very stupid. He’d learned to comply with the tags very quickly. But he only had his immediate obedience at stake; these men had their entire world view at risk. They were being forced to admit the things that they suspected were true but didn’t have the intelligence or the guts to pursue.

  “So now,” Synster continued, “why have you not advocated against the use of drugs that inhibit the liver from making the cholesterol it knows the body needs? Why have you chosen to stop the body’s natural protective reaction? As the top health officials in this country, you create policy that recommends what people eat, what drugs are approved, allegedly to ‘heal’ them.” Synster paced a little more. Then he continued. “People think they need to take these drugs when they finally succumb to their lousy diet. You drug them to supposedly correct their condition when you know simple nutritional modifications will prevent any need for such poisons. If I didn’t think you all idiots, I’d suspect some sinister plan to fatten them all and make them die early!”

  Slowly, Suit put up a hand and offered, “I didn’t know nutrition could correct disease. I thought it was genetic.”

  Synster stared in disbelief. Rick could tell he was trying to enjoy himself while simultaneously venting his frustration that his own plan had gone awry. Synster expected humankind to tend to their own needs, to recognize what was good for them, what was natural for them. They had not done their part, and because of it, Synster’s plan was failing.

  Rick looked at them in disgust. Their lives had supposedly been devoted to the study of human health. After decades of escalating health problems, it now took an alien with a pain zapper to make them feel negligent in their duties. Now they were being asked to explain themselves.

  “Answer me. Why would you want to inhibit the liver’s function?” Synster asked in a more relaxed tone.

  “We have merely drawn conclusions from studies,” answered one. The others all looked very worried.

  “So you’re telling me you’ve read all your studies and made your own decisions, or you have read some studies and followed what others have told you? Your own research shows you what the problems are. And yet your government requires doctors to put people on these drugs at the first sign of problems, sometimes before the problems arise, instead of eliminating the cause. Well, things are going to change. And we start with this issue. Gentlemen, you will be changing the way things are done, and I will help you.

  “Years ago we assisted in the development of improved high-yield dwarf wheat that we hoped would substantially reduce the cost, enough to make it available to all cultures and feed your starving people, to keep them alive so they could reproduce to provide for our harvest. Well, here we are. We thought this situation would be self-moderating. The higher your percentage of diet that comes from carbohydrates, the sicker you get. The more wheat becomes a part of your regular diet, the sicker you get. It’s a fairly simple, linear, and tight causal arrow.

  “When we first introduced wheat, we were so concerned that your early ancestors would recognize the pattern of poor health that followed. We went to great lengths to conceal it. Now we’ve more recently made this grain pervasive across your planet and chronic illness has never been worse. It’s staring you in the face and you still cannot see it. Your imbecilic performance in that regard is only surpassed by your methods of treating your ailments. You take symptoms to be causes, you purposefully disrupt your body’s natural defense strategies with unnatural chemical intrusions, and you spend fortunes researching how you can intervene in the actions of genes when you fail to allow them to act as they naturally should in the first place. You people are idiots. You are making your planet a hospital ward of poisoned zombies.

  “We start with the food pyramid. That will have to change. Nutrient-dense, whole foods only, eliminating wheat and limited in carbohydrates. Then we’ll start with those who are on prescription medications. We’ll use fines through your government-controlled insurance system to force people to change their diets, and we’ll mandate tests to ascertain compliance. Once consumers create the correct, natural intestinal environment with inflammation reduced, the body’s endocrine and digestive systems will begin working normally. Without wheat’s proteins and starches making your membranes as permeable as a sieve, cellular tight junctions will normalize. There will be less need for antibiotics, psychotropic drugs, anti-inflammatories, and pain medications. Most of your autoimmune conditions will cease to appear, and most will resolve.

  “Announcements will be made that the following drugs are ineffective and dangerous: statins, antidepressants, proton pump inhibitors, antipsychotics. With government-mandated compliance to the revised food pyramid confirmed through your health care system, none of them will be necessary anyway.”

  Rick saw Jogger’s hand go up. “Mr. Synster, sir, uh, the food pyramid is with the Department of Agriculture. We’re with the Department of Health.”

  “Really?” Synster was surprised. “So the people who grow the food are the ones putting out information on what people should eat?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that explains a lot!” Synster considered the issue for a moment. “Come out with your own food pyramid. I’ll give you the information as to what it will be.”

  Another hand went up from a sheepish supplicant. Hangover asked, “How will we justify these recommendations?” The rest on the couch rolled their eyes at their associate’s stupidity. Synster didn’t care about justification, they thought.

  To their surprise Synster replied, “The justification is in your own research literature. Perhaps you should read it? David Thompson,” Synster diverted his gaze as he spoke.

  David almost popped out of his chair.

  Synster continued, “Our sampling of gall bladders that you’ve provided from cholecystectomies has been largely unsuccessful. They are too diseased for us to use. Our quality control will apparently require fresh gall bladders. So we’ll need to change our strategy. You people already advocate against dietary fat. You claim it is the culprit of many health problems. Since the gall bladder is a vital organ for the digestion of fats, you will represent that its removal aids in the passing of consumed fat without digestion. Explain that this will aid in the reduction of absorbed fat as well as a decrease in blood cholesterol. If your people believed the lipid hypothesis in spite of what your research says, they’ll believe this.

  “As a requirement for the maintenance of their health insurance at its current cost, all individuals with a body mass index of twenty-five or over must schedule to have their gall bladders removed. They will be fined if they don’t get it done.”

  Suit slowly raised his hand.

  “What?” Synster asked.

  “We’re not allowed to fine them, by law,” he said.

  “We could call it a tax,” suggested Pink Slippers. “A tax for keeping their gall bladders. Everybody crosses state lines. It’s a matter of interstate commerce.”

  They all nodded their heads, agreeing that would probably work.

  Synster continued, “With laparoscopic methods on an otherwise asymptomatic person, the surgery should be minimally invasive. The gall bladders will be collected by your government under the auspices of a study and delivered to us. David, you know the method.”

  David nodded, and all four on the couch stared at him in amazement.

  “Use this program of gall bladder removal as an argument for the cessation of statin drug use. They won’t need the cholesterol control if they aren’t digesting it. I have data here.” Synster produced four thick white binders from the case he’d arrived with. “They contain defensible statistics a
nd conclusions from your own studies interpreted in a manner that the argument can be made that experts agree: various health benefits will result from these removals in ninety-two percent of the cases surveyed, eighty-seven percent of the time. Copy it, and get it out to your people.”

  He gave them to Suit. “Your mission instructions are also enclosed.”