[ExI] Sound of Silence

[Ben Zaiboc]

Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> This experience, which affected a basically "wet"
> transhumanist who is
> very much in love with, and proud of, his personal body and
> its
> current performances, besides giving me ample opportunities
> to
> reconsider the charms of mind uploading ;-) has made me if
> anything
> more acutely aware of how primitive and crude even the best
> treatments
> money can buy still are, and how most great breakthroughs
> in medicine
> actually have taken place roughly in the period 1850-1970,
> till their
> lamentable slowing down to a crawl during current years in
> spite of
> all the media hype still surrounding them.
> 
> We may be spending - and perhaps wasting - a lot in health
> care in
> most western society, but the legal, cultural, educational,
> ethical,
> financial framework is hardly what it should for
> fundamental research
> and innovation if we really wanted to invert this trend.


Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Being made of meat really sucks, sometimes.

While I agree that current treatments are primitive and crude, I think that the 'crawl' of our advances in medicine is only relative to what most people on this list can see as being possible.  Things like keyhole and robotic surgery are recent advances, and although we still mostly have to leave broken bones alone to heal, that may not be the case for too long.

It would be nice, though, not to have to rely on the Chinese to make all the advances that involve anything risky or potentially sue-able.

Ben Zaiboc