Challenge #01993-E169: The Protection Experiment

Considering the terrifying methods our immune system uses to keep us safe, can you please write a story about how aliens first dealt with human diseases (probably something that has a high mutation rate) that jumped the species barrier?

How did they deal with the pandemic (think of what smallpox did in North America) their own immune systems were unprepared for? How did they handle what they found when they researched the crazy human immune system?

Autoimmune disorders?? -- Anon Guest

If there was one thing to be learned from interspecies contact, it was to be wary of alien plagues. Diseases one species deems harmless can ruin another's population. Diseases can jump species barriers and get worse. Diseases can lay waste to entire planets. And a Deathworlder disease has even more potential to do so than any other.

Humans have had their unfair share of such things, even before the Shattering. A strain of influenza crossed between two domesticated species before leaping into humans. The resultant virus did more damage than the mass warfare that helped spread it. When a virus can transmit across multiple intelligent species, it could destroy the universe as we know it. Humans understand this, and almost all encounters between species involve livesuits for a reason.

And then Galactic Society learned about the "kill or cure" tactics of the human immune system.

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