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Smart Person's Disease

Medical researchers have made a startling discovery that is destined to transform life as we know it.

Smart Person's Disease - SPD - is predicted to emerge as the dominant 21st Century pestilence, far outstripping the impact of HIV/AIDS, depression and cancer combined.

According to I.M. Serious, the team's lead researcher, people who are infected with the SPD virus eventually come to view all problems as solvable by rational thinking and action.

"In its advanced stages, SPD manifests itself in delusions and hallucinations of rational control," Serious said. "Victims think they can solve all their personal problems - and everybody else's - by identifying their underlying causes and developing rational strategies to address them."

Left unchecked, the virus eventually infects the heart. The victim appears alive, but the heart has stopped beating.

Researchers first uncovered the trail of the SPD virus in blood samples taken from the current Administration's foreign policy advisors.

"After Iraq, we knew something was wrong," Serious said. "We identified novel viral bodies that were choking the moral recall, which is a small reservoir of feeling embedded in the conscience.

"It's a short trip from the conscience to the heart. Once the virus attacks the conscience, the heart is toast."

Researchers confirmed their initial findings through further examination of blood samples and tissues taken from very smart people working in health care:

• Physicians with hallucinations of rational control and autonomy in a managed care environment.
  
  
• Health plan executives with delusions of integration in a rising tide of fragmented consumerism.
  
  
• Hospital administrators obsessed with mega capital expansions in an environment of grocery store-like operating returns.
  
  
• Health policy analysts blithely applying systems analysis and planning techniques to a force field of utter chaos.
  
  
• SPD is thought to have originated in the Enlightenment. Some researchers believe the virus has always been present but has been held in check by dominant ideological and religious viruses, which are thought to weaken the brain over time but leave the heart intact.

Others speculate that bioterrorists may have developed a particular virulent strain of SPD that masquerades as ideology and infiltrates the body to eventually consume the brain and heart alike.

"We're checking the water supply in Washington, D.C. and major think tanks right now," Serious confirmed.

At a SPD Conference held last week following announcement of the discovery, a group of very smart people concerned about their own health and the future of the known universe searched for answers and a possible cure before SPD reaches epidemic proportions.

Delegates from Arizona were especially alarmed, considering that the state is trying to attract more smart people in order to diversify the economy and make Arizona a Very Cool Place (VCP).

"What does this mean for the future of Phoenix?" one anxious city planner asked. "How can we be a VCP with crowds of heartless people working downtown?"

Conference participants were heartened to hear that researchers were already hard at work on a cure. Some are investigating a noticeable lack of humor in smart people and whether injections of laughter and whimsy slow the progress of SPD. Others are exploring the application of microwave technology to stimulate the tissue of the moral recall, which is going the way of tonsils in many smart people because of lack of use.

Another group of researchers is conducting studies on clogged arterial networks connecting the imagination to the brain. In people with advanced SPD, the brain believes it is sufficient unto itself.

The Drift will follow developments in this alarming epidemic with all the seriousness they deserve.