alt Hacker NewsI swear I read of pharma companies experimenting with this. The idea that because the molecules are so foreign, the body lacks enzymes to breakdown the product, so the drug gets a much longer half-life than would be typical.
I swear I read of pharma companies experimenting with this. The idea that because the molecules are so foreign, the body lacks enzymes to breakdown the product, so the drug gets a much longer half-life than would be typical.
The underlying property is called "chirality" and describes why a left glove and a right glove are meaningfully different from each other even though they have the same topology.
Many things can have chirality: big things like gloves, and small things like drugs. The concept is not alone a danger. The concept of a thing which could take our raw materials, disassemble them, and recompose them in a way that would deny us the use of those resources, that is the stuff of sci fi horror thriller.
It sounds like the first thing that should be done is to contact Hollywood to make a really terrifying movie.
In the sequel Russia will have bred a new generation of opposite-chirality humans and will be racing to colonize space first.
(The big in-joke will be that they all wear the same gloves)