The original post: /r/aliens by /u/TwoWilburs on 2024-11-22 21:48:10.
A fun thought experiment. I think aliens would be interested in medical research on us but also, very specifically, resistance and immunity to novel pathogens. That is, on earth, humans, animals, and plant life are all very vulnerable to novel pathogens. That’s why Covid hit so hard. It was novel. Our bodies had never experienced it before so no one had any sort of immunity. It’s why Dutch Elm disease ravaged American elms. However, science is always studying creatures with certain immunities. Certain animals (sharks, bats, ostriches, and many more) have immunity from many pathogens. And for non-human intelligence, every pathogen might be novel. A long way of saying I think two things are possible.
- NHI would want to study us to see how we are immune from earthbound pathogens and how to reproduce that immunity.
- NHI would be curious to see if we are immune to otherworldly pathogens.
For #1, that would help them in terms of any notions they have of getting closer to humans (and also likely explains why they keep their distance from us generally).
For #2, there could be pathogens which absolutely ravage their lifeform that we’re immune to in the same way we might study a plant in the Amazon that kills cancer cells or study ostriches for being immune to influenza.
I think novel pathogens are likely our best defense against them too. It’s more fun to imagine space battles and invasions, but in actuality our germs and the germs of our animals are likely the thing they’d fear the most.
It also explains the very, very slow process of them revealing themselves to humans. They could literally interact with entire continents without bumping into malaria, or yellow fever, or other pathogens that are so innocuous to us (but not necessarily to them) we don’t even bother naming them.
And, of course, any pathogens they carry would be likely novel to us.