Is anyone else also getting a 404...
A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
71–80 of 363 posts
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#72He shouldn't just accept this. There has to be something to be tried. With his notoriety, the option to try some experimental new treatment should at least be considered.
He doesn't have a chance of lasting more than a few months, most of which will be painful and with rapidly decreasing functioning. With the type and severity of his cancer, an experimental new treatment will simply ensure that his last days are more painful than they need be.
This reminds me of an interesting article I read about Doctors being more likely to refuse cancer treatment - on the knowledge of trading quality of life for a shorter period rather than hanging on for longer.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/08/06/how-doctors-die...
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
I'm assuming that as an author of fairly hard sci-fi Banks would not mind overmuch if he was resurrected as a "mere" upload. The point of cryo is once the initial damage is done, no additional information loss to entropy occurs, so you can afford waiting for far-distance supertech to see if your neural behavior is at all reconstructable.
Thirty centuries from now I can imagine someone boarding a starship:
'I am the Iain (M) Banks,' the ship said, through the drone.
'That's a weird name. How did you end up calling yourself that?'
The remote drone dipped one front corner slightly, its equivalent of a shrug. 'It's a long story . . .'
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
The cell damage inflicted by the cryo process is readily acknowledged by its proponents. They argue that the neurological damage is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. Much like data from a wiped hard drive can still be recovered by digital forensics. As for the problem of outer layers freezing faster than inner layers…
No they understand how to fleece gullible people.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn, this sounds like a Klatskin tumor, a "rare" cancer. My father hat that kind of tumor as well. He died within 8 weeks of first developing jaundice. Let's stop trying to make people click on cheery-colored buttons and do something about this fucking disease instead.
Getting rich and improving the economy is almost certainly the best thing you can do to combat disease, pollution, poverty, etc.
Or by doing the actual medical research that will fix these problems. Seriously, not everything is solved by money - most is fixed by smart people figuring stuff out. If all the smart people spend their time trying to make money, who is going to do the research?
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#76He shouldn't just accept this. There has to be something to be tried. With his notoriety, the option to try some experimental new treatment should at least be considered.
Sorry, but there is a lot of assumption and ignorance in reply to your comment.
1. Modern supportive care means that chemotherapy does not involve constant vomiting, pain and torment. Some patients work and look after their family in between having chemotherapy. For example, in a large study on the efficacy of chemotherapy in biliary tract cancers including gallbladder cancer the rates of severe vomiting were only 5% (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0908721). And when it does happen, it doesn't go on for 'months'.
2. If you shrink the cancer people feel better ie treatment can improve quality of life, that's why we do it.
3. Some cancers are indolent. This means that people can live for a long time with them, whether they have treatment or not. See Stephen Jay Gould's essay for example (http://www.cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html)
4. Participating in clinical trials is a standard part of cancer management. You don't have to be famous to receive experimental therapies if you want them.
Having said all that, chemotherapy IS primitive and doesn't work as well as it should, and hopefully we won't still be using the same stuff we are now in 50 years. But it can help people, and trying it is not crazy or hopeless, and an extra couple of months might mean a lot to a particular individual.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Player of Games is one of the few sci-fi books I recommend to readers interested in the genre.
Which Banks book should I start with? I was going to start with the Player of Games after your comment, but it turns out it's part of a series, and Consider Phlebas is the first one. Does it matter?
No, it doesn't really matter. Each of the Culture novels is basically standalone. They occasionally reference events amongst each other, but more in an "this is an interesting story too" manner.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#78Two of my favorite authors now... Three if you count that some people consider K.J. Parker to be a pseudonym of Iain (M) Banks.
My two favorites of his I think will always be Use of Weapons and Look to Windward. Coincidentally, I just started re-reading Excession last night.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#79Another person that might be cryopreserved [1], but probably won't be, much like the 150,000 who passed in the last day or so [2]. Many sorts of terminal case can actually lead to better quality cryopreservation under present legal restrictions [3], in comparison to the drawn out and uncertain end of aging, precisely because they are more rapid and certain in time. (Or might be plastinated [4] in the alternate histor…
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
>Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive.
No, that's not very rational. Cryopreservation may have low chances of success, but it's like a billion billion billion times better than just dying (which has zero chance of success). Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation is very probable, but it's a lot better than nothing.
>Now, imagine you are trying to flash freeze an entire body.
I don't think your critique is very relevant, when almost all cryopreservation is only done to the brain, not the whole body.
>Ignoring all the cell death that has been happening for the last hour, how about thawing?
Thawing is not relevant to be discussed at this point, because the bodies will not be thawed using current technology. If the cryopreserved brain has enough information to be reconstructed, it will be done at some point using advanced nanotechnology. Nobody will be thawing brains using 21st century technology.
> I'm not even touching the morals and ethics of companies that are under no obligation to actually do what you paid them to do (since you are dead).
Yes, there are risks. Nobody is claiming that cryopreservation has a very high chance of success. It's a lot better than nothing, though. By the way, thse cryocompanies or organizations tend to be owned and supervised by relatives of the cryopreserved people. These managers also want to get cryopreserved themselves, and want to reconstruct their own relatives. In addition, there's great scientific value of bringing 100 year old people back alive.
By the way, scientists don't refer to the cryopreversation as freezing, they call it vitrification.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
The cell damage inflicted by the cryo process is readily acknowledged by its proponents. They argue that the neurological damage is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. Much like data from a wiped hard drive can still be recovered by digital forensics. As for the problem of outer layers freezing faster than inner layers…
> ... is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots.
You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology.
The business model seems to be "give us money now, and the technology that could make this work will probably be invented soon enough. Probably".