A safe and powerful treatment for the body against deadly radiation

[Drashner1]

Something possibly quite useful to a spacefaring civ even in the near future.

LINK

[MacGregor]

Well this is very interesting. Did I read correctly that it only works for high levels of radiation? Would it be effective say to protect astronauts on Mars?

[Bear]

As I read it, I'm pretty sure "only effective in large doses" refers to the amount of medication taken, not the amount of radiation the medication is supposed to prevent.  The breakthrough here is that by combining these two catalysts in a nanocrystal they're making something several times more effective than both - meaning for the first time there's something effective in small doses, that's relevant to people who might encounter a lot of radiation.

And it has to already be there in your cells when you get hit with it.  So it's preventive, not palliative.

But it's hugely interesting.  I had been more or less assuming that radiation resistance, and biology protected from degradation due to zero gravity - will become the first genemods to become widespread in the population - after just two centuries of living in space, I'd be betting on most people just randomly inheriting it from one or more of their parents.

There's several likely candidates for radiation-resistant genetics.  For example elephants have 5 copies of a gene called p53, where we have 2.  And it prevents them from getting cancer despite long life and high body mass.  As something we've already got, I'd bet on it being dead-easy and highly effective to tweak the chromosome adding several more.

Several less closely related organisms have other adaptations for dealing with radiation, but they're all non-mammals.  It's hard to guess whether their genetic bits and pieces would help us.  Lots of research needed.