[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

Stephen Van Sickle sjv2006 at gmail.com
Fri Dec 5 20:19:08 UTC 2014


Well, shoot....

No offence intended, anyone.  And this isn't cryonet.  Not my day...

s



On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 12:17 PM, Stephen Van Sickle <sjv2006 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> <private reply since I don't "officially" read cryonet>
>
>
>
> *So all I am offering is a way to get more of the bexarotene to cross into
>  human brains.*
> Careful, there.  Just because a solvent crosses the BBB, and a molecule
> dissolves in the solvent, it does not automatically follow that the
> molecule will cross the BBB.  If it were that simple, there are hundreds if
> not thousands of drugs it would be used with.  Unless I am missing
> something here...I have not followed this thread closely.
>
> steve vs
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 11:34 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *John Clark
>> *Sent:* Friday, December 05, 2014 9:02 AM
>> *To:* ExI chat list
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts
>>
>>
>>
>>>>
>> >>…I could use the advice of a good medical ethicist
>>
>>
>> >…Why? I'm sure they have opinions, most of them contradictory, but what
>> actual facts do they know that you do not? I think you do yourself a
>> disservice…
>>
>> Thanks John, this post did dig deeper and contained useful insights.
>>
>> Regarding medical ethics, this is something I think about a lot.  Back in
>> the old days, a doctor by the name of John Harvey Kellogg was a most
>> innovative sort.  He was the guy who invented corn flakes and a lot of
>> other stuff in the health field from about 1875 to 1930s.  He did a lot of
>> experimental therapies before the days of lawsuits, before hospitals had
>> ethics boards, so doctors were on their own.  When people had very little
>> access to information, the local doctor was revered, the most
>> scientifically literate person in many communities, not just in medicine
>> but in all areas of science.
>>
>> A perfect example of where Kellogg could have used a good medical
>> ethicist was in his experimental treatments of asthma using radon
>> inhalers.  He killed an unknown number of patients with that, but they
>> generally didn’t perish until several years after the treatments so no
>> cause and effect was established experimentally or observationally.  A
>> medical ethicist would have required Dr. Kellogg to follow up on those
>> patients who received the experimental treatment and the link between radon
>> and lung cancer would have been found earlier than it was.
>>
>> In Kellogg’s defense, he saved way more patients than he slew, by
>> promoting low-fat diets, exercise, and complete abstinence from tobacco,
>> recreational drugs and alcohol.  No doubt people who followed his advice
>> were healthier.  He was ahead of his time in many areas.  But he did slay
>> perhaps hundreds with the radon.
>>
>> >…You can't (or at least you shouldn't) spend your life worrying about
>> how true facts you have found might effect very stupid people…
>>
>>
>>
>> Ja, the reason this is different is that I am not offering some diet fad
>> or cosmetic therapy.  If this appears to work but it is hard to tell, and I
>> publicize it, there is a very real risk that the medication doesn’t help at
>> all (the amyloid plaque model very well might be wrong, as Rafal pointed
>> out) but we know it does harm in other ways.  This could be the modern
>> radon inhaler.  I can easily imagine Dr. Kellogg’s patients reporting that
>> they felt better right after he killed them with that stuff, with a death
>> sentence that took several years to be carried out.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have no feasible way to monitor the patient, so it is an open loop from
>> my perspective.  The person who can monitor the patient lacks scientific
>> sophistication and certainly lacks an objective viewpoint from which to
>> evaluate the patient.  There is high risk of false positive reporting.
>> Understatement: in these cases, false positive feedback is nearly assured.
>> People cling to hope, even the false variety.  Religion incorporated is my
>> evidence.
>>
>>
>>
>> I read over Rafal’s studies and his commentary, and I am now thinking
>> there is a good chance the beta-amyloid theory is all wrong anyway.  We
>> know we can cure the hell outta mice, and we know that bexarotene does
>> cross the blood/brain barrier in mice, and we know it doesn’t cross very
>> well in humans, we know that Targretin is specifically formulated to
>> minimize barrier crossing, and we know the beta-am in Alz. mice brains is
>> the same gunk that human Alz. patients get.  But the mechanisms for how it
>> is helping the mice is different (we think) from the mechanism which causes
>> neuron damage in humans. But we might be wrong, and I am not a doctor, I’m
>> just an engineer.  I don’t even want to be fooling with this, I really
>> don’t.  I chose to not go to medical school, because I get too tangled up
>> in ethics problems.  I would have gone crazy by now had I chosen that
>> route.
>>
>>
>>
>> So all I am offering is a way to get more of the bexarotene to cross into
>>  human brains.  This allows a lower dose which (I expect) would minimize
>> the harmful side effects, which are numerous and serious, and need to be
>> compensated in experimental patients, otherwise bexarotene itself can cause
>> symptoms that mimic the disease it is thought to treat.  Now that’s a hell
>> of a note.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regarding very stupid people, I do object to that.  Reason: the models
>> for Alzheimers disease are so damn complicated and cotradictory, they are
>> nearly overwhelming even for the scientifically sophisticated.  If a person
>> feels their brains slipping away, I see no reason to doubt either their
>> intelligence or sincerity if they grasp at any straw, anything.  That isn’t
>> stupidity, it’s well-justified desperation.  I don’t want to offer a straw
>> which is just going to make a bad situation worse.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you were referring to non-Alzheimer’s bex abusers, well, even there,
>> it is conceivable that a smart person will fear the disease so much they
>> will self-diagnose incorrectly that they have the disease.  How many of us
>> here have blanked, or temporarily forgotten a name you knew for years?  It
>> happens, and it has nothing to do with Alzheimer’s.  If a person is like
>> me, where the only thing they perceive in themselves of value is their
>> brain, and they might panic and over-react at temporarily stumbling on the
>> name of a friend.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > If yes and yes, are those results contradictory?
>>
>>
>>
>> No. John K Clark
>>
>> OK John thanks.
>>
>> Parting shot please, for anyone who gets thinking they are qualified to
>> be a medical ethicist: go hang out at the local nursing home, particularly
>> the memory care specialists.  Go there just one day, just an afternoon,
>> talk, watch and listen.  Talk to the patients and talk to the staff.  If
>> you can spend just a few hours there and come away still feeling you always
>> know the right thing to do, then I want you to be my personal medical
>> ethicist.
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
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