5/7/2015 From Trek to Tech | Faculty of Medicine

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< Return to Spring 2015 MagazineFromTrek to Tech

How Sci-Fi Inspires MedicalResearch 

By Erin Howe

 

Progress happens when people start todream about the worlds science fictionauthors write about.

—  QUAID MORRIS

Star Trek featured a version of theGamma Knife. Mary Shelley predicted

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5/7/2015 From Trek to Tech | Faculty of Medicine

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transplant surgery. Many of today’smedical technologies and procedureswere first imagined in science fiction.And experts say we shouldn’t besurprised.

“Good science fiction deals with existentialquestions about the meaning of life, our roles withrespect to each other, with respect to society, andwith respect to the physical universe,” says RaywatDeonandan (BSc ’90, MSc ’93, BEd ’93), an alumnusof the Department of Physiology and — like manypeople in the medical professions — a sci-fi fan.“Science fiction has the breadth and the freedom toexplore the nuances and texture of any kind ofsentient existence. Beyond any other kind of genre,I think science fiction has the freedom andpermission to do this.”

Deonandan is a University of Ottawa epidemiologistwho specializes in global health, but he also edits ascience fiction website called Skiffy.ca . (Thesite’s name is a play on a commonmispronunciation of “sci-fi”).

Space may be the final frontier, but Deonandan isalready thinking about how extraterrestrialorganisms could affect human health.

One of his research projects looks at the wayshuman health might be impacted if pathogens fromouter space made their way to earth and caused anoutbreak. Deonandan says the idea was inspired bythe sci-fi theory of panspermia, which holds thatthe building blocks of life on earth came from outerspace.

“If in fact these complex, organic molecules existoutside the earth and if they ride these strangeinterplanetary transit systems involving meteorimpacts, then why wouldn’t we expect one result ofthat to be some kind of disease? And if thathappened, then how would we deal with itepidemiologically?” asks Deonandan, who grew upreading books by authors like Arthur C. Clarke andIsaac Asimov. He says he loves sci-fi for inspiringreaders to be courageous and ask big questions.

5/7/2015 From Trek to Tech | Faculty of Medicine

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Quaid Morris (BSc ’96), an Associate Professor atthe Donnelly Centre for Cellular and BiomolecularResearch, read many of the same books as a childand, like Deonandan, he finds them inspiring.

“Progress happens when people start to dreamabout the worlds science fiction authors writeabout, and then try to create some of the things inthe books — or try and understand why they can’t,”says Morris. “They make science interesting bywriting books about ideas. And that’s why a lot ofhard science fiction is really about taking the ideasof science and following through with them to theend.”

One such idea: What would happen if computersbecame as smart as people? It’s a question Morrisexplores in his computational molecular biologyresearch.

“For me, it all seems to come down to this initialinterest in artificial intelligence,” he explains.

Morris points to Lieutenant Commander Data, StarTrek’s self-aware android on the StarshipEnterprise, as one inspiring example of artificialintelligence. On television and in movies, Data is aninvaluable member of the ship’s crew,programmed to calculate information quickly —much like some of the software Morris develops inhis lab.

“Following that path leads to the idea of computerprograms that can recognize patterns the sameway people can,” says Morris, who is cross-appointed to the Departments of MolecularGenetics, Computer Science and Electrical andComputer Engineering. “Humans are the bestpattern-recognizers in the world, but you can’t getsomeone to sit in front of a computer and look atterabytes of data. We need artificial intelligence todo that for us.”

Though there’s seemingly endless potential fortechnology to help people, sci-fi writers have alsopredicted what would happen if we becameoverreliant on it. Authors like Ray Bradbury andPhilip K. Dick imagined what would happen whenpeople stopped being able to distinguish the virtual

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world from the real one.

“I’m seeing technology dependence all the timeand it’s actually affecting people on a clinical,social and cultural level,” says Bruce Ballon (PGME’00), a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry.“Technology is rampant and people walk aroundwith cell phones, looking like cybernetic creaturesfrom Star Trek called The Borg that are all hive-minded together.”

While Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 featured adystopian world where people’s minds arecontrolled by what they see on television, Ballonaims to empower people to think critically abouttheir interactions with emerging technology.

“We need to think about how we deal withtechnology and how it affects our relationships withthe people around us. Because if we don’t, wecould leave ourselves vulnerable to beinginfluenced,” says Ballon, author of Swimming inCyber: Learning to Live Healthily in theIntersections of the Virtual and Real Worlds. He isalso Director of the Advanced Clinical andEducational Services for Problem Gambling,Gaming and Internet Addiction at CAMH.

“I think we’re in an interesting time,” Deonandansays. “The mainstream now understands thematurity and the possibility of science fiction,where a generation ago, it was perceived as therarified domain of the socially repressed fanboy.Now we’re recognizing there are some important,real-life philosophical imports to this particularkind of narrative.”