An Immune System for the Planet

Can we build a global pathogen defence system -a planetary equivalent of the immune system - to protect us when the next pandemic arrives?

- By Hayley Bennett. Photographs by Getty Images and Science Photo Library

Most of the time we all walk around in a little bubble, a defence system a that can spot a threat and neutralise it before it has a chance to harm us. That's the wonder of the human immune system, and it's only when we get ill do we become aware that it's there at all.

What if we could give the planet an immune system just like ours? A silent network of satellites and supercomputers quietly keeping track of anything that could cause the next pandemic; primed to sequence the culprit and capable of rolling out vaccines and treatments the second someone presses the right button. That's the vision of global technology expert Dr David Bray, who believes that we need to build an immune system for the planet.

I'm talking about a dynamic system that learns to respond to what's present in our world,” Bray says. If you think of our world as an organism and we are parts of that organism, then what do we need to do, much like the immune system of our bodies, to detect that there's something going on that's not healthy?”

Bray is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, a not-for-profit based in Washington, DC, that carries out research to solve big, real-world problems using technology. He talks at the speed of his brain – fast probably because he has a lot to cover. Starting at age 15 working for the Department of Energy, he's used satellites to spot forest fires, built computer models of HIV/AIDS, got a PhD in “organisational responses to disruption, briefed the CIA on bioterrorism and carried out independent analysis on the Afghanistan situation for the Obama administration.