Every step you take...

[moonlettuce]

I've been thinking. (Yes, I know, not always a Good Thing (tm) where I'm concerned, but what the hell.)

How many people on Atlantis have the ATA gene? And I'm talking either naturally or through the gene therapy. So far, I've got:

John
Rodney
Carson
Markham

So, John and Carson are natural, and Rodney is gene therapy. (Is Markham natural or therapy?)

Where I'm going with this is here: Unless it has a pretty low rate of success, I'm assuming the gene therapy took with other people. However, canon suggests it didn't.

*bounces off to check transcript of 'The Brotherhood'*

Okay, so three Jumpers went into the air to go after the Wraith dart. One was piloted by Markham, one was Carson, and one by some unnamed third person.

The thing I'm trying to figure out is: why was Carson piloting one of the Jumpers? Okay, he has the gene, but he's also the CMO. The non-military CMO, which means surely they wouldn't send him up in one of the Jumpers if more of the military guys had the gene. Which implies that there's not that many people on Atlantis with the gene. Or rather, it implies that there's not that many of the military on Atlantis with the gene. Hmm... maybe it just took with the scientists *grin*

So, people on Atlantis with the ATA gene? How many do you think?

Comments

[zortified.livejournal.com]

There's a comment in Hot Zone about it - I want to say 47% but I don't know if that's the number of successes or failures. And they don't say they tried everyone, either.

They sent Carson because not only does he have the gene but he was trained to fly the jumpers. When the calvary arrived, they had to give the gene therapy to them and also teach them how to fly. So you could assume not everyone who got the first, got the second.

We know Miko Kasan-something (the asian chick from Letters in PEgasus) also has the gene therapy and can use stuff, now. But from the way Rodney is talking (he wants Carson to do it) it may be that still, very few people have it - or that natural ATAs are better, still. Maybe they have an easier time of making things work? And that'd be important in precision activities like flying.

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

True, true.

I think it was part of me going "Er, shouldn't Carson, you know, the doctor, the geneticist who is the best bet of making the ATA therapy 100% successful, be one of the last people you want to put in the line of fire."

MInd you, that's also the same part of me that goes "You know, having Sheppard and McKay on the same team is really not that good of an idea. Because if the team gets taken out you lose your head of the military contingency *and* your head of the science team in one fell swoop."

On the other hand, maybe I'm overthinking this and should just go with the flow *g*

[zortified.livejournal.com]

It's the Kirk Syndrome. We have to send the top guys down to the planet because nobody wants to watch a TV show where the captain stays in the bridge and the junior lieutenants all go down to explore.

Er, unless they're led by Riker, but Riker was being Kirk so it's OK.

Um. Which is the real reason they have Carson do anything ATA related. Because it's him we wanna see.

[temaris.livejournal.com]

On thinking about it we should be able to calculate back from the 48% Zlenka claims in Hotzone. (The gene therapy is only effective in forty-eight percent of recipients. http://www.gateworld.net/atlantis/s1/transcripts/113.shtml)

Assumption one: it either works or it doesn't -- you can't be a little bit ATA gened -- it might work less well or better for different people: viz Carson vs Sheppard, but you either get it or you don't.

Assumption Two: Zelenka really means 48% and that figure is exactly correct.

Therefore the minimum number of people tried must be twenty five, twelve of whom successfully received the therapy and thirteen of whom it failed to work on.

If Zelenka is approximating the figure, or rounding the figure, then the numbers will not be correct. If the figure is correct you simply run in multiples (assuming that the success rate is static, which is a really bad assumption to make -- you can get good or bad runs). For a statistically useful universe they would have to test it on hundreds, preferably thousands of people. And they don't have even a hundred, iirc.

So:
6/7.5
12+/13-
24+/26-
26+/39- etc etc...

But that's unjustified assumption piled on unjustified assumption and wouldn't be nearly so regular. Fourteen on the run fail and then five succeed and then twelve fail and then twenty succeed will still give the same odds but the rate of success will veer madly.

Ahem. YOu could vary it to get differnt figures, but for that exact percentage the relvant ratio is 12:13 are successful:unsuccessful.
Minimum number of people with ATA gene excluding Carson and John: 12 people. One of whom is Rodney. I think I'm right in saying we have no evidence one way or the other whether Markham's gene was natural or artifical.

[alyse]

I think he was probably rounding ::g::

What we do know is regardless of how many people they had tried it on - and I reckon that with it being new and experimental, and regardless of the fact that the FDA aren't there to monitor them, they're probably being cautious and slowly rolling it out in case there are any long term side effects. We know by Hot Zone that they'd tried it on Zelenka - and it didn't work - but hadn't yet got around to Ford.

My supposition - and this is based on nothing but guesswork here ::g:: - is that they were rolling it out across the civilian scientists first. It makes sense. The scientists are the ones who are most in need of the ability to activate Ancient tech, mostly to see what it does. As for the soldiers, at that point (up to Hot Zone) it was less essential. Very few missions through the gate at that point took Jumpers with them, and there are only eight after all. I would suspect that John, and maybe Bates team (is that the one Markham was on?) may have taken priority, but there are many worlds to explore where the gates are on the surface of the World, so there's less of a priority to make your grunts Ancient compatible :)

I suspect, however, that their priorities may have changed dramatically after The Brotherhood, with the realisation that the Wraith were on the way. All of a sudden, having your soldiers ATA enabled would seem to be more important than the people figuring out what the tech does. After all, they may not have time to figure anything out, but you may well have to use what you've got. Certainly, the first thing that Everett does on coming through the gate is to ensure that as many of his men as possible receive gene therapy.

I've wondered whether Elizabeth has received the therapy. I don't think she has it naturally - I think we would have heard, plus she was first through the Gate in the pilot and the steps didn't start lighting up until Sheppard (close behind them and the first of the second wave through with Ford once they'd got the all clear) came through. Which would suggest, I think, that none of the first four or five through had the gene.

But has she had the therapy and it failed? Maybe, but we're back to the potential risks longer term, and I suspect again that they may be holding off giving it to her for the same reason - she doesn't deal with Ancient tech on a day to day basis, plus she's not as expendable as the other members of the team, being the boss and all ::g::

[temaris.livejournal.com]

I think he was probably rounding

I think so too *g*

It's a good point about the failures. They never actually say if there is any kind of penalty on the failure -- immune system reactions or something. The success seems to pass off fairly unexcitingly. And yes, start with the civilians who have the scientific bent to not care that it's not been tested except on Rodney *g*

There aren't that many people out there though, and even if they are taking it slwoly to wait ofr reactions they can't be taking it *that* slowly. Ideally they would be waiting a couple of months to observe longer term effects rather than just dashing off to inject the next body. What we need is a breakdown of the schedule and roster for therapy. I imagine initially it was volunteers only and might actually have had more military volunteers than scientists. By the time they knew about the Wraith I suspect tehy would all be eager to have the gene if they could.

INteresting that they didn't propose a campaign of giving the therapy to everyone who hadn't yet had it in Hot Zone. Presumably Carson felt it wouldn't work sufficiently quickly, although in non-contaminated areas it could have been possible to beat the incubation period. Especially if John hadn't been wandering around breaking quarantine.

I doubt Elizabeth has had it. She has shown no signs of ATA effectiveness, and I suspect that she might have the 'everyone else first -- it's not mission critical that I have it' kind of attitude.

Of course, since they've been out there a while, could just be that everyone's had it, and what you see is what you get. Rodney; Markham; third pilot; Miko... which is a considerable drop from 48% success rate. They've never identified the other failures either, have they?

[alyse]

Presumably Carson felt it wouldn't work sufficiently quickly, although in non-contaminated areas it could have been possible to beat the incubation period. Especially if John hadn't been wandering around breaking quarantine.

It is odd, because while Carson told Ford that it wasn't always successful - which is when Zelenka chipped in with the 48% information - from what we saw in Hide and Seek it does act very quickly for those where it is successful.

Mind, it did take a while to figure out that the ATA gene provided some protection, at least as far as Rodney went. Maybe Carson wasn't quite sure that was the reason, or maybe things moved so quickly after that there wasn't enough time to roll it out before they came up with the EM pulse.

The other thing we don't know is how long it takes to make enough of the gene therapy to provide a viable shot. We know that it's engineered and delivered by a mouse retrovirus. Maybe they just don't have enough mice ::g::