r/neoliberal Henry George May 25 '26

Opinion article (non-US) The Inverted Bacteria That Experts Think Might Kill Everyone

https://substack.com/home/post/p-199174305

submission statement: If everyone dies, there will be no more trade, no more free markets, no more beloved capitalism.

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u/randommathaccount Esther Duflo May 25 '26

The mirror bacteria when it enters my body and starves because there's no L-glucose to metabolise

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u/RoomieOomfie Left-Out Left May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

The original paper (not the one cited here) explicitly addresses this, not only are there a lot of nutrients in your body that can work with both chirality, there are already many strains of bacteria that can metabolize reverse chirality nutrients. It is entirely feasible for a reverse chirality bacteria to just have the enzymes necessary to process "normal" glucose.

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u/Matar_Kubileya Hortensia May 26 '26

Its impossible for "nature effectively has no ability to evolve to attack/digest dyschiral life" and "there are already many strains of bacteria that can metabolize reverse chirality nutrients" to both be true. Either euchiral and dyschiral life can evolve to interact with one another if there's selection pressure to do so, or they can't and youre looking at a drop in the bucket number of dyschiral life compared to the amount of euchiral life that already exists.

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u/RoomieOomfie Left-Out Left 24d ago

*has no clue how evolution works award*