That is very bad news in a large number of ways. What a pity!
A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
231–240 of 363 posts
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are going to die. If it's not cancer, it'll be heart failure. I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is.
I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is. When I was a kid childhood leukemia was a death sentence. These days survival rates are in the 80% and up range. The goal isn't non-dead sick people. It's well people. Attacking that problem doesn't mean that you can't attack the problem of too many people too. Hopefully in a more productiv…
Yup -- the first thing public health students learn is the WHO definition of health: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." In my clinical trials course, equal emphasis was put on extending life and increasing quality of life (e.g., as measured by quality adjusted life-years (QALYs)).
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you recommend as a first book to read? (edit: never mind, sibling thread has it covered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5485695 )
Read this page first as an amazing introduction to the Culture: http://nuwen.net/culture.html
I wouldn't. It's amazing only after you've read some of the books and familiarised yourself with it. Any teenage SF fan can come up with some kind of crazy and awesome-sounding universe, but turning it into a series of dozens of amazing novels is another thing altogether!
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#234Terrible news. If you're not familiar with Iain's work you owe it to yourself to drop everything and start reading the Culture series[1] right now. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series
Terrible news. If you're not familiar with Iain's work you owe it to yourself to drop everything and start reading the Culture series[1] right now.
In fact go give all of his books a try (hey - we're allowed to read non-SF here too aren't we ;-)
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#235Very sad, of course. He's only 59. I've gotta admit that I'm also a bit angry. The war on cancer is 40 years old and we are still so far away from solving the problem(s). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer The first commercial microprocessor was released in the same year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004 Solutions? Ideas? The list in my mind is starting to get painfully long: Randy Pausch (47), Steve J…
Jobs, more than likely, would have survived if he didn't try "alternative" cancer therapies. Banks did everything by the book and his outcome is poor, but at least he tried properly. http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/20/steve-jobs-refused-early-canc...
It was actually not quite as bad as it was represented in the press. The cancer was diagnosed in 2003. He avoided surgery for nine months and had surgery in 2004 - when it was still stage 1. That surgery was apparently successful. The cancer had certainly not metastasised in any detectable way at that point.
From stuff his family has said, and from what his biographer said about his interviews with Jobs, the primary driver for the delay was an almost phobic fear of surgery rather than "alternative medicine will cure me". This is surprisingly common from conversations I've had with some cancer treatment folk. I knew a family member who unfortunately had similar feelings :-/
The kind of cancer Jobs had was a rare and slow growing pancreatic cancer. Normally if you get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer you are in surgery later that bleeding day if at all possible. For pNET tumors longer delays of weeks or even months aren't unknown (not recommended either mind - but not insanely stupid).
(as a separate point - I love how all the reporting around Job's cancer was that it was a "rare cancer" presented in the the "ohhh rare and scary sense"... if you have to get pancreatic cancer a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor like Jobs's is the one you want to get).
The alternative medicine didn't make it worse in of itself.
The delay in surgery may have made it worse - but it's not certain. The five year survival rate for that cancer, when treated by surgery, is still only 61% at stage 1 (see http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/PancreaticCancer/DetailedGuide/...). Steve lasted nearly nine years.
Was the 9 month delay in surgery a sensible thing? Almost certainly not. But the real story was a long way from the "Killed by alternative medicine" line that hit the press. Even if Jobs had had surgery the day he was diagnosed, it would most likely have ended the same way.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I became a fan of his after reading just a few chapters of The Player of Games, and have since read almost everything he has ever published. He is an author of extraordinary skill.
The Player of Games is one of the few sci-fi books I recommend to readers interested in the genre.
To everyone who enjoyed Player of Games, I ask.. why?
I'm not suggesting your opinions are wrong, of course, but I had a much different impression. Obviously Player of Games is well regarded by many people, so I'm curious to know what I missed.
--- SPOILERS BELOW ---
My general impression was that the Empire of Azad was that its conception lacked imagination. The peculiarities of the species (the three sexes, the society built around a board game, etc) could have made for a very interesting culture, but those instead the peculiarities were mostly left untouched and the culture was recognizable as human in every way. The greatest offense, in my opinion, is that the most interesting part of the book (the game Azad) was left almost entirely undescribed. An alien species should be different. Vastly different. These were humans painted green on Star Trek.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#237This is horrible news. We are all poorer today, all of us. Banks is an inspiration to all who read him - of what could be, what can be, what is to be. Cancer has claimed a terrible toll in my life. Three in my immediate family and counting, the countdown very fast for one of them. And now it seems to have turned its unwelcome gaze to my intellectual treasures. I hate this disease, I despise it so much it's hard to ex…
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Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#238Is there really no preventative tests we can take periodically to discover these things before they get out of control? I have the feeling that future generations are going to ask WTF we were thinking.
I agree. I go to the dentist twice a year to check for cavities. I can only guess the costs for the tests are too expensive. Still couldn't insurance cover the tests?
I can only guess the costs for the tests are too expensive. Still couldn't insurance cover the tests?
The short answer is that the tests don't exist. Cancer is still a hard problem that's a mess of environment and genetic factors. The tests that do exist (e.g. the PSA test for prostrate cancer) often have limited utility.
If you want to fix that help do basic research, or fund basic research. It's not a conspiracy. It's just a really, really hard problem.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I go to the dentist twice a year to check for cavities. I can only guess the costs for the tests are too expensive. Still couldn't insurance cover the tests?
The only great change I can think of is getting cheaper MRIs. The problem with MRIs is that there are so many false positives, but maybe regular scanning would help reduce that noise? It is thought that most people fight cancer 5-6 times in their life before anything is ever detected.
At the point you can spot cancers in MRI scans it's often too late.
Re: A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
#240Earlier 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…
Data on a hard drive can be recovered precisely because a typical deletion does not destroy any data--only the addressing bits are erased.
If you take a HD and write over half the bits with zeroes, you will not be recovering much useful information from that with digital forensics.