I got sent this reddit comment from a thread about Kal'Tsit in my Arknights channel and this sparked a wonderful discussion. This has been sitting in my drafts for a while, and is probably video essay material - I'll probably revisit it if I ever get into a point in my life when I can make videos about it. Since I first drafted it (months ago at this point), I've also heard of a big chunk of Originium lore from the CN server too - I'll touch on it briefly but give ample spoiler warning about it.
Ironically enough this is not a post that I authored, despite my reputation, but I did like OP's energy here. I begin with a pre-emptive disclaimer that despite my enthusiasm for the game, Arknights has a lot to read, even more to actually comprehend, and no-- I don't know every piece of lore like the back of my hand. However, I still feel like I know enough to scrap with this. The same goes with pharmaceutical sciences - I'll disclaimer the following with the statement that I have a PharmD, but I'm not licensed to practice; this ain't a professional opinion, I'm just poking at fiction on the internet with the rest of you.
Let's start with the notion that Oripathy isn't just 'magic rock cancer'. I can see why this is a misnomer if this logic holds - if it's an assimilatory disease mechanism akin to "grey goo" that turns our beloved carbon-based molecules into ROCK AND STONE then the way to address it it changes significantly, since a lot of pharmaceuticals are in and of themselves organic molecules (at least, according to the carbon-based definition. Organic molecules certainly exist at your certified organic farms, but not usually the ones that make their way into pills.)
The comparison to prion-based mad cow disease and the second paragraph puts this into perspective really nicely. Antibodies? Assimilated. Cell defense targeting mechanisms? Clueless. Get the phagocytes to eat the problem? Congrats, those things just turned too, and now you're down a lot of key defenders. Depending on where those rocks settle and start assimilating, every single disease state in the body related to non-functioning organs is pretty much up for grabs. It is rough.
The three possible ways mentioned to treat Oripathy all seem viable, and I'll break 'em down next here.
It's known that RI does in fact take blood-Originium concentration measurements which implies that it's able to be either dissolved or at least suspended in water. If Originium is at least water soluble, then it's possible to get the kidneys to simply do their job better. We see this happening all the time with minerals that would otherwise be crystals if they weren't made bioavailable to our bodies someway, somehow. Though now that we mention this - god...(or feranmut/sovereign of beasts/We Many/Terran deity or demigod of choice), the thought of Originium/Originite kidney stones is not a pleasant one. If Originium is less soluble than we'd like it to be then good luck trying to pass it through ion channels without destroying and assimilating said ion channels in the first place. Never mind getting it through the ureters, bladder, and urethra without shredding it all along the way. At least the water won't turn...but considering that natural disasters are at least linked to Originium if not powered by it, I wouldn't like a miniature tidal surge to start rioting in my nephrons, thank you very much. Shortcomings aside, obviously for this option you'd want to be on plenty of fluids and have working kidneys in the first place, lest you tempt fate and risk rolling the dice on those aforementioned Originium kidney stones concentrating, recrystallizing, and accumulating.
The second way mentioned is dialysis, or essentially hooking up some tubes to route blood out of your body into a filtration machine then back in again. Patients would have to sit there and wait while their blood circulates. This, I'm not quite sure is put into practice in-universe. There might not be a suitable filter for Originium developed yet for use with blood, or perhaps even if the blood was filtered, the concentration levels return so rapidly that dialysis treatment is too wasteful for marginal benefit. Whatever the case, I can imagine Warfarin and maybe Closure too having their work cut out for the if dialysis machines go brr.
The third refers to surgical excision, or simply removing infected tissue outright to stop the spread. This...is dicey even on a good day, since small Originium particles usually spell doom for anyone involved. Again, not to draw too many comparisons to cancer here, but even cancer patients can relapse after a tumor gets removed due to a chunk of cancer cells that broke off into the bloodstream before the surgery setting up shop somewhere else. And this is all assuming that the chunk of infected tissue you're getting rid of will even heal properly after losing a portion of itself.
So, all things considered, treatment research is probably beyond difficult. I already know the typical rigors of small-molecule drug development: you start from a pool of seemingly endless combinations of atoms, but as you narrow the field, it becomes riskier and more expensive to test promising candidates. So many get culled even before they get synthesized in a test lab just by computer simulation - even more as each round of testing is done in the lab, in test animals, and even more in human subjects. And, assuming that a given candidate doesn't fail for one reason or another, these drugs have to go against the current standards of treatment to see if it's even worth using in different situations at all. A drug (or any treatment, really) can fail because of low effectiveness of what it's intended to achieve, or by simply being more trouble than it's worth (think side effects, or how difficult it is to keep patients on said treatment). It's a giant money and resource sink, and Oripathy patients don't exactly have the luxury of time and money in most cases. I'd like to think they put PRTS to work with those computer simulations before any drug candidate makes it to Warfarin and Aak's wet lab for testing. Kal probably steps in to write and review testing protocol for it all too. It's hard work, and Rhodes Island has some incredible protagonist immunity armor to keep pulling through it all.
Now, treating and potentially curing Oripathy has unclear effects on Arts potential. As this is the McGuffin material that makes this wonderful magi-tech setting go round, it's implied that you don't necessarily have to be infected to use Arts, but using Arts does increase your risk of infection, and being infected can definitely amplify the intensity/potency of your rock-magic accordingly (see the Rhine Lab comic, or how good Ifrit and Eyjafjalla are in game). Whether or not curing Oripathy will hilariously gimp an otherwise fantastic Caster remains to be seen for obvious reasons. The same uncertainty applies towards the possibility of re-infection.
Whether treating it or not, prevention's always the best cure. All of those infection monitors worn on the various personnel under agreement with Rhodes Island go onto folks infected and uninfected to keep tabs on their status, which does make me curious as to how they work. They remind me of the real-life counterparts of oxygen monitors that use IR light to tell how much oxygen is in the blood passing by, typically on your finger. How it monitors stuff beyond that and basic vitals is beyond my comprehension, especially considering how the form factor and how its worn changes between operators and species. In fact, I was discussing how they were portrayed with a couple of acquaintances, and discovered that monitors have been worn on necks, ankles, wrists, and even 3 instances of tails. They also have varying designs, which could either be chalked up to artist inconsistencies, or constant revisions or scrapping of Rhodes tech - there's your Doylist vs. Watsonian explanation for that little tidbit.
Regardless of the specifics: Oripathy really sucks. It already sucks physically and from a medical standpoint - treatment options are limited, research and testing is definitely gonna take a while, but at least you have a general sense of how doomed you are with the existing monitoring tech. Whether or not we'll get to see a breakthrough over the course of Arknights is not for me to say.
**CN Pre-global Release Spoiler Chapter Warning: this section contains spoilers for unreleased chapters on global at the time of writing. Read on at your own risk. **
So, apparently, the nature of Oripathy is expanded further upon in revelations revealed in future chapters. Supposedly, Originium is the crystallized form of human emotions or memories, which can manifest themselves as whispers or other perceptions of memories for some that are more keenly attuned (think Ebenholz, Amiya, maybe Rosmontis counts here too if you think about it). If that's the case, that's where my realm of expertise meets its limit and where you'll need a combined forces approach to address the many issues surrounding Oripathy. Conventional medicine can of course help to treat symptoms depending on what you're dealing with and what you have available, but if these magic soul crystals create even more memories and suffering just by existing, we're gonna need more than an IV drip of morphine to dull the pain of these soul-powered rocks.