Vidar
Virus Radar

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iPhone introduction

Personal area networking

Project abstract

Project rationale

Understanding DCV

Background publication

Cellular Ecology

From a Cellular Ecology point of view, the person is a colony of primarily human and microbial cells. The body is composed of ten trillion human cells, a hundred trillion bacterial cells, and small number of other cell types. As a person goes about their daily activities, they leave skin cells that have been rubbed off their surface in the environment. Breathing, coughing, and sneezing can eject human and bacterial cells into the environment. The body emits about 10 million particles a minute, mostly skin cells. Thus, bodies are constantly exchanging cells with the environment.

The presence of bacterial cells in the digestive system is crucial to health. However, the body can also harbor dangerous bacterial cells. Even beneficial bacterial cells can cause disease, if they penetrate into inappropriate parts of the body. In some cases, infection with benign microbes can inhibit the invasion of pathogenic organisms. One can view the body as a complex ecological system.

Since cells can be transmitted between individuals, it is also appropriate to view society as part of an ecological system of different cell types. In some cases, the infection of a single human cell can lead to a world-wide pandemic. Typically, this would occur by rapid multiplication of infected cells in one body and then the transmission of infection to others through ejection of infectious materials. Small Pox, for example, was only stopped by ensuring that not a single infected human cell remained in existence.

While it has long been acknowledged that microbes can cause disease, the full range of their effects continues to be investigated. Many diseases that were previously thought to be of genetic origin are now suspected of being a result of infection. Some auto-immune diseases are suspected of being caused by an environment that is "too clean." It has become clear that obesity is often associated with a specific type of common cold virus. Physiological research has show that the ability to tolerate stress is associated with benign infections occurring shortly after birth. This type of effect persists throughout life and is associated with age-related neuropathology.

Distributed Contagion Vigilance

While the management of communicable agents is of crucial importance to health, their invisibility has meant that only specialists with expensive instruments are capable of ascertaining their presence. These specialists are responsible for educating the public about control measures that are appropriate in any given situation. Once the presence of pathological organisms has been determined, most people are capable of following procedures for their own and others' protection. Such procedures include hand washing and use of condoms, for example.

However, there are often delays in response by authorities to invisible threats. Political or religious dogma may limit an effective response. The AIDS pandemic, which continues to spread, clearly illustrates this dynamic. There were five million new infections in 2005. The number of people living with HIV globally has reached its highest level with an estimated 40.3 million people. More than three million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2005; of these, more than 500,000 were children. People want this pandemic stopped, but global leadership is simply inadequate.

The technology of Distributed Contagion Vigilance helps people take part directly in the management of agents spread by contact between persons. Each person carries a special cellphone, which can sense nearby phones and transmit records to a database. To combat airborne infection, for example, the phone would register when another user was within ten meters and transmit an encrypted record to the database. If at some later time that other user was found to be infected, the database could locate the meeting record and notify the person of the need for medical attention. Since the records are encrypted, they can only be read by the phone that transmitted them to the database, thus ensuring users' privacy. With a more advanced system, a user can automatically be notified when an approaching person is safe with respect to infection risk.