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Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

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Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#111

Post by oceanplexian »

majormajor wrote: post #100
ianbutler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'll finally be able to build a society for everyone. I assure you this isn't the only blocker and its naive to think that [other_set_of_humans] will not try to consolidate power for themselves after you remove the current set. Most people are not in it for their fellow man and whoever sold you this idea that billionaires are the only impediment to, or even blocking now, a better society -- lied to you. By all mea…

Everyone in the US misses the 50s, marginal tax rates were crazy high. "Oh, but people had lots of deductions and not many people actually paid the top rates" - yeah, that's exactly the point, it encouraged money to be spread around more. And a whole lot of people prospered, while government revenue was less lopsidedly concentrated too. Get people away from paycheck-to-paycheck debt loads and you've improved a lot of…

We have 4-5x the normalized GDP per capita compared to the 1950s.

The amount of taxes we collect isn’t the problem. Excessive government spending and inflationary pressures on things like housing is (Which, btw seems to always go up regardless of what political side you want to point fingers at)

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#112

Post by ipaddr »

roamerz wrote: post #38
ashdksnndck wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defense is only 13% of federal spending: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Military spending has actually decreased a lot as a % of GDP in the US over time, so old narratives about this have become less true. So the anti-military-spending orgs have to abuse the numbers if they want to keep that narrative going: https://econofact.org/u-s-defense-spending-in-historical-and... Though, a rea…

>> poor value for money across a variety of sectors Yup this. I went in for a cardiac stress test a few months ago. Less than 30 minutes in a room with a treadmill, an ekg machine and a low-mid level technician. $10k.

What's the pressure in the system keeping the price down? Many could supply a treadmill and ekg machine for a few hundred.

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#113

Post by magicalhippo »

Centigonal wrote: post #109
magicalhippo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family member needed a kidney transplant in the early 60s. This was in the UK where the first successful transplant was in 1959, so just a few years earlier. Thanks to a kid on a motorcycle she got a kidney just in the nick of time. She was in her early 20s and was told she could expect a few years. Because of that she never had kids. Her donated kidney served her well and she lived a quite normal life. She passed…

> Interestingly she mentioned she was told to take some strong medicine after the transplant. She got this feeling it wasn't good for her and stopped taking them soon after, without telling the docs of course. Typically, after a kidney transplant, patients are instructed to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives. This is to reduce the risk of the patient's body rejecting the transplanted organ. Your…

> Your family member was just straight up lucky

That was my thought as well when she told me. Then again, when given just a few years perhaps one considers these things a bit differently. The side effects for the drugs you listed does indeed not sound like a lot of fun.

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#114

Post by russfink »

bawolff wrote: post #96
SoftTalker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile we can’t figure out how to provide a basic level of housing and healthcare to everyone.

In star trek they only figured that out in 2024, so we are only a year late. And honestly, the way us politics are headed, a "bell riots" type event doesn't even seem that implausible. (Learning from it on the other hand does seem implausible) [For those not into star trek lore, the way star trek became a utopia was first the government put poor people in internment camps, eventually triggering violent riots in 2024,…

So we’re getting close in the US government is putting certain types of poor people in internment camps.

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#115

Post by nenenejej »

d6e wrote: post #41
SoftTalker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile we can’t figure out how to provide a basic level of housing and healthcare to everyone.

Housing can be affordable or an investment. It can't be both

It can be sort of both. What you need is more housing built at affordable prices. But dont oberbuild. In that situation housing should act as store of value to avoid inflation loss, but not something that you get rich buy borrowing and buying up dozens.

You need socialism to do this efficiently. There isn't room for a profiteer. You need the government to invest (in the for people sense) in allocating land and building housing. Ideally dense housing.

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#116

Post by Centigonal »

magicalhippo wrote: post #113
Centigonal wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly she mentioned she was told to take some strong medicine after the transplant. She got this feeling it wasn't good for her and stopped taking them soon after, without telling the docs of course. Typically, after a kidney transplant, patients are instructed to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives. This is to reduce the risk of the patient's body rejecting the transplanted organ. Your…

> Your family member was just straight up lucky That was my thought as well when she told me. Then again, when given just a few years perhaps one considers these things a bit differently. The side effects for the drugs you listed does indeed not sound like a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, they suck. Long-term effects of just prednisone can include everything from muscle weakness to reduced bone density to spontaneously developing diabetes. Generally, doctors prescribe these kinds of drugs for longer than a couple months only in situations where the risks of not taking them are worse than the many, many side effects of taking them long-term.

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#118

Post by xdfgh1112 »

irjustin wrote: post #74
d6e wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing can be affordable or an investment. It can't be both

At a system level - in Singapore it is. HDB (public) for affordable, private for everything else. 75+% of housing is part of the HDB system.

Has no real democracy and the govt is able to plan decades ahead. It seems much better than the typical Western political system to me. But then again gays were only very recently accepted there, right?

Re: Man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

#120

Post by ipaddr »

tw04 wrote: post #68
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

“Xenotransplantation” is pretty #%^*ing metal. It’s pretty wild being alive these days. Lots of big stuff the species is struggling to adapt to and figure out how to exist with. But also… we got the tablets from Star Trek. And now we have the ship’s computer from Star Trek, and the early makings of the holodeck. And we’re making pigmen senior citizens who would otherwise be dead. It’s quite something to stop and thin…

And yet while (legitimate) science can universally agree continuing to burn fossil fuels will cause unimaginable chaos for planet earth, half the planet doesn't seem to care about the impending collapse. So while in my personal vacuum this is awesome, when I stop to consider the situation for 30 seconds I can only think: huh, we might have been able to find a new cure for humanity that isn't going to matter when havi…

Legitimate science doesn't concluded unimaginable chaos from continuing to burn fossil fuels that's what influencers or movies or tiktok reels present because they are part of the attention economy where scaring you is profitable.

Besides hunter/gatherers need medicine men who understand the old ways.

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