8 Fictional Ailments
Airborne disease season is upon us, so put on your SARS mask and don’t lick any subway poles. I’m pretty sure they cured Bird Flu, but just in case, peruse these disorders and ailments you can’t catch from kissing or anywhere else:
Premature Aging (as seen in Jack): Robin Williams’s titular character was born with a disorder that causes him to age at four times the normal rate, so when he’s ten, he looks like a forty-year-old. His mother (Diane Lane) decides to send him to fifth grade, because what a child in the body of a middle-aged man really needs to contend with are play structures and the psychological supervision of the public school system. Eventually, he wins the respect of his classmates because he is so pure at heart. The twist is that Francis Ford Coppolla directed this.
Backwards Aging (as seen in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button): Brad Pitt’s Benjamin is born an old man and grows younger as everyone else around him ages. The film (and the book it’s based on) never really addresses the issue with science. They’re just like, “oh, Brad Pitt ages backwards” super-casually, like it’s on par with having a lazy eye or a third nipple.
Global Infertility (as seen in Children of Men): The ladies of the world cannot get pregnant, so there’s no future and everybody loses hope. Like in Benjamin Button, no character ever busts out a science-y line that neatly explains the pandemic (”Hey guys, it was too bad about the acid rain/supernatural whatever/weird maple syrup smell that left all our females barren, eh? Right, guys?”). When the movie begins, this business has been going on for a couple decades though, so I’ll assume they just stopped production on rubbers and started making pipe bombs in the woods about eight years in.
Never Nude (as seen in Arrested Development): Tobias Funke (David Cross) has a disorder that renders him psychologically unable to get fully nude–always hiding his “thunder” with a pair of cutoffs. Funke claims there are “dozens” afflicted.
Rage (as seen in 28 Days Later): Finally, a movie that explains the fake origins of its fake disease. People + monkey rage = zombies. This film is like the coolest episode of Nova ever.
White Blindness (as seen in Blindness): Remember when this came out? And all those blind advocacy groups were protesting because most of the blind characters were assholes? And everyone kept making jokes like, “Well, how can they see the movie anyways? They’re blind!”? That was pretty funny.
Avian Bone Syndrome (as seen in 30 Rock): Jack Donaghy’s onetime fiancée (Emily Mortimer) claimed to have “hollow bones” that made everything from sex to handshakes dangerous.
Hemoglophagia (as seen in Ultraviolet): If your symptoms are having amazing powers and looking like Milla Jovovich, it’s not really a disease so much as an unexpected, awesome time, like those weekends when they give you free HBO (which happened to me this past weekend). I guess it can kill you after ten years, but isn’t it better to have a decade of superpowers than a lifetime of ordinary? I mean, I got to watch Primary Colors last night and it was awesome.
An honorable mention for Count Choculitis (as seen in The Office), disqualified because no character actually contracted it. Hey, do they still make Boo Berry?
Progeria is essentially premature aging, except these patient’s don’t live as long as Jack did. So perhaps, 7 fictional ailments, plsu count choculitis previously mentioned. - Boston area physician.
Never nude is a serious condition which effects dozens and can only be treated by a certified analrapist.
Progeria is absolutely real; I know someone that has it - he’s 35 and thriving.
Dumb article.
Actually Global Infertility is explained by Kurt Vonnegut as being caused by a super infectious disease that sweeps over the earth missing those few souls shipwrecked on the remote Galapagos islands. The novel Galapagos is kind of a crazy homage to evolution and you should give it a read because it is both awesome and counters your argument that global infertility is never explained via science in fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_(novel)
Global Infertility can be done. You just have to make a virus that can be easily spread like the flu. That causes the human host to become sterile. Wondered if Governments have been working on this.
Don’t forget the Super Rabies from Quarantine. Yes, rabies exists, but not the kind that makes you go zombie-like in five minutes and completely ignore whatever pain you might be feeling (even if your leg was broken and the fibula is sticking out of your skin).
Jack’s condition (of aging four times faster than usual) is a somewhat exaggerated but nevertheless real illness, known as Werner Syndrome. It is similar to Progeria but not the same thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_syndrome
http://www.prizerebel.com/
index.php?r=1005474
it really works
GOOD ARITICLE
Rage certainly is a real affliction but It only affects Dogs. Usually spaniels for some reason. Very little is understood about it but it causes Dogs to turn on their owners for no obvious reason and viciously attack them.
Another major mistake. Backward aging can absolutely happen. I myself was born an elderly man and aged backward. I’m sure there are hundreds, nay, millions like me. The science behind this listicle is very shoddy! I also have hollow bones.
the article doesn’t say that global infertility is never explained in sci-fi, just that it wasn’t explained in children of men.
This is one of the dumbest articles I’ve read in a while. A lot of the thing that you say are unfounded and wrong. You started off talking about ailments that could be real but weren’t and then all of a sudden you start explaining how there is no sickness that will give you super powers and then kill you in 10 years. No fucking shit dumbass but thanks for making sure everyone picked that up.
[...] 8 Fictional Ailments [...]
You forgot the best one…A BRAIN CLOUD!
H1N1 vaccine will cause global infertility they are hoping.
how could you forget spontaneous dental hydroplosion?