Addicted to fisheggs! Oh yeah!

[fuddy]

Hi, all. Fictional scenario -

People discover that the egg-mass of a fish is deliciously sweet. Everyone partakes, w/ no ill effect, but their offspring are born addicted to it. The withdrawal symptoms are psychologically & physically devastating, & each year they need more & more to stave them off.

The cure is the gel surrounding & encapsulating the egg-mass, & it must be held in the mouth for, say, fifteen minutes to be effective (absorbed through the mucous membranes, like sub-lingual B-12, to by-pass break down by the liver).

Perhaps the addiction is caused by a parasite, or an algae toxin, & the gel formed to protect the bad stuff from killing the fish, or keep predators from eating the eggs (like someone suggested in the 'biology' forum), I don't know.

Would this be medically, chemically, genetically feasible? Any suggestions? Thanks!

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by fuddy

Hi, all. Fictional scenario -

People discover that the egg-mass of a fish is deliciously sweet. Everyone partakes, w/ no ill effect, but their offspring are born addicted to it. The withdrawal symptoms are psychologically & physically devastating, & each year they need more & more to stave them off.
…
Would this be medically, chemically, genetically feasible? Any suggestions? Thanks!

It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of biological possibility, though I’ve never heard of anything like this actually occurring. The stuff would need to be able to insert itself into the parent’s germ cell DNA in such a way that the dependency wasn’t experienced by the parent, only his/her child. To do this, the pathogen would either have to “know” to insert itself only in germ cells, not far more numerous somatic cells, or somehow cause the germ cell to produce eggs or sperm containing a different copy of the inserted genes than its own, the latter of which is, AFAIK, impossible. Such a gene-inserting pathogen would most likely have to be a virus, as that’s what viruses excel at.

From an evolutionary perspective, this pathogen doesn’t make much sense. Although some pathogens, particularly parasites, are know to affect animal behavior in order to, for example, get the animal to be eaten by to infect an intended host, this pathogen’s making its victims need to eat increasing amounts of the fish eggs don’t seem to do the pathogen any good. If the victims know no better, they will attempt to hunt and eat the fish and its eggs into extinction. If they are clever, they will take measures to assure that no future children are born infected (eg: by sterilizing people who have eaten the eggs, or, as in the previous case, by eradicating the fish), and attempt to cure those born infected. Either way, the pathogen goes the way of many intolerable pathogens, and is eradicated.

For me to find the scenario fuddy describes plausible in a science fiction story, I’d have to be lead to entertain the possibility that the pathogen was artificially engineered. The story would thus fit in the “mad biochemist” genre, along with such books as Frank Herbert’s “The White Plague”.

I’ve encountered the idea of fish eggs as a society-transforming drug/pathogen vector, in a very obscure novel, Tom de Haven’s ”Freaks Amour”.

Both of these books are memorable, IMHO, primarily as reflections of the spirit of the time and culture in which they were written, not as serious biological speculation. Nonetheless, I liked them both, especially de Haven’s story.

[fuddy]

Thanks for the insights, CraigD. The situation is -

Some humans make it to an island after crashing on another planet. They inadvertently infect the natives w/ a disease (no immunity), & the few vengeful surviving natives give these addictive eggs to the humans, in hopes of killing them off.

So the next generation of humans find themselves addicted (maybe it 'kicks in' at puberty).

Maybe the gel formed to protect the pathogen from migrating from the eggs into the fish’s body & killing it - the pathogen's 'niche' is the eggs, & in order to eliminate other animals that would otherwise predate these sweet eggs, it developed this killing addiction. (?)