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What happens if somebody gets sick, or disease spreads?
Jan. 27, 2002
We plan to send at least one surgeon on every mission to Mars. Once we have a larger base we plan to have two surgeons at the base at all times. All the people going on the early missions will be young adults in their late 20's or early 30's in excellent physical health so their chance of developing life threatening illnesses during their mission would be low. It is extremely unlikely that Mars contains any pathogenic (disease causing) organisms. First of all, in the unlikely event that life actually evolved on Mars, it is even more unlikely that it would be harmful to humans. There are thousands if not millions of species of bacteria on Earth, but few of them harm humans. Viruses and pathogens need to have a protracted relationship with a host over millions of years for them to evolve virulence factors needed it to cause disease to the host. Since it is unlikely that multicellular animals similar to those on Earth evolved on Mars it is unlikely that people will contract anything worse than the usual diseases which they will bring from Earth. If the crew were to pick up an illness native to Mars, it would more than likely manifest itself during the trip home, and in that case they would be quarantined in orbit until the nature of the disease could be determined.
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