Idea of the century #1

For my first post of the new year and also, I notice, my 300th post at all, I've had an idea which should revolutionise medicine, disease and general doctoring stuff. OK you may have guessed that I haven't fully researched the field, but still I reckon I'm on to a cast-iron gold-standard silver-plated FA cup of an idea. The sort of idea that immortalised the greats like Mendel (of the Royal Fireworks fame), and Darwin. Yes I've compared myself to Darwin, because I've had a brainwave, a wave of brain so profound it will wash into the rancid fjords of our immature and wasteful society, drown the ne'erdowells who have up to now gripped science and medicine in their talons, drown them in my brain-tsunami, and wash them down and give them a thorough cleansing and so on. I know it needs work: obviously genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, but I figure that the perspiration is the bit other people can do, and I'll get at least 1% of the Nobel Prize. So without further ado: My brilliant idea, which came to me as I lay in bed, or possibly in a dream, whichever sounds better and gains me further accolade. (Drum roll & horn vamp goes here)

A contagious vaccine

Yes! That's it. How come no-one's ever thought of that before? A vaccine which is contagious, so you give it to one person and they infect the rest of society with their immunity. In short order everyone is immune and disease turns around and just fucking gives the fuck up. We all live forever in global happiness and hospitals are closed and turned into nature reserves or Kew Gardens style hothouses.

Think of the advantages: No more vaccinating your poor innocent baby and watching as they cry for six hours and hate you for the first time of what will now be many, many times; no more vaccinations at school and getting punched on the arm where you just had the BCG jab and it fucking hurting a fuck of a lot; no more MMR scares and autism and people refusing vaccines because of something they read in the Daily Mail, because the contagious vaccine will obey no newspaper readership barriers; and best of all no more diseases apart from the new ones obviously, but we can work on those.

I know some poo-poohers are going to suggest that 1) making a contagious vaccine is actually quite difficult and probably requires 100 years of cleverness combined and 2) might not be such a good idea what with contagion vectors and virus mutuation and all that palava, but fuck 'em, they've had a good go at it and look at the mess they've made so far, leaving poo all over the place. And anyway you've got to start from somewhere, and I think starting from here is better than not starting at all, which is what the poo-poohers are suggesting.

Other, more conspiratorially-minded poo-poohers may worry about setting a precedent for basically infecting the entire nation for the good of its own health. It could lead to some civil liberty issues. Perhaps some contagion can be spread that, for example, changes brain chemistry to prevent people from enjoying cocaine, or X-Factor or shopping on a credit card when you are already far too in debt, or all the other woes of modern society that we'd like to abolish. That does sound a little big brotherish, and totalitarian, but I'm confident we can trust science and that, and er, well let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

So there you have it. An idea which will transform society and save the world. Thank you for listening. I'll be signing autographs in the Nobel Prize winners section later.