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From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

benjamincburns.com

11–20 of 234 posts

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#11

How long until a daily brain scan and body scan is a part of everyone's routine, the same way brushing your teeth is? Problems like these are untreatable if left for too long, but if caught early, there's sometimes hope. The solution seems to be to develop as many types of passive scanners as possible. The problem is false positives. But wasting a month needlessly visiting the doctor doesn't seem that bad.

X-ray and CT imaging however slighly increases the cancer risk.

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/radiationexposurea...

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#12
post #11

How long until a daily brain scan and body scan is a part of everyone's routine, the same way brushing your teeth is? Problems like these are untreatable if left for too long, but if caught early, there's sometimes hope. The solution seems to be to develop as many types of passive scanners as possible. The problem is false positives. But wasting a month needlessly visiting the doctor doesn't seem that bad.

X-ray and CT imaging however slighly increases the cancer risk. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/radiationexposurea...

I thought a MRI is both more accurate and safer.

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#13
If people donate nothing towards ameliorating diseases of ageing[0], then what's to be expected?

People die. People get sick. Everyone you, and I, know is probably going to suffer and perish.

The poor soul in the blog post sounds like he got struck down in his prime; but rest assured, your time is coming in a matter of decades.

Accept death/disease or do something about it; but don't be shocked when it happens! Statistically, it's going to happen in increasing rates as you, your family, your friends, and everyone you know gets older.

Being blindsided by death is odd. A cognitive bias?: 'It won't happen to me'. But, quite frankly, it most probably will!

[0] http://www.sens.org/

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#14

How long until a daily brain scan and body scan is a part of everyone's routine, the same way brushing your teeth is? Problems like these are untreatable if left for too long, but if caught early, there's sometimes hope. The solution seems to be to develop as many types of passive scanners as possible. The problem is false positives. But wasting a month needlessly visiting the doctor doesn't seem that bad.

False positives aren't inherently a problem. If you have accurate understanding of the sensitivity and specificity of a test, then you can take action to maximise the utility of the expected outcome.

This means, for example, not necessarily performing a biopsy just because something is there (but it's probably benign). The cost of invasive procedures such as biopsies, and risk-increasing tests such as CT scans has to be balanced against their benefits.

Of course, there is no risk with a full-body MRI scan. The machine itself is expensive, but otherwise it nominally only costs electricity, maintenance and operation. If full-body scans were, as you say, routine, the cost of the machine would be amortised and an economy of scale should prevail.

The problem is legal; if a doctor sees something on a scan and doesn't take action, they can be sued. This is the case even if there is negative expected utility from performing the test due to the low probability of an actual malignant condition. Due to this, it is not uncommon to hear doctors say that full-body scans do more harm than good.

Until the legal system starts to account for rational choices based on statistical information, this problem is going to persist.

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#16
post #10

How long until a daily brain scan and body scan is a part of everyone's routine, the same way brushing your teeth is? Problems like these are untreatable if left for too long, but if caught early, there's sometimes hope. The solution seems to be to develop as many types of passive scanners as possible. The problem is false positives. But wasting a month needlessly visiting the doctor doesn't seem that bad.

False positives don't mean a month of visiting a doctor - they mean several months of anxiety inducing "watchful waiting" or invasive biopsies. And false positives are not a rare event. False positives are very common. On top of that the radiation (from CT scans) increase the risk of cancer. Scans for healthy people are strongly discouraged. There's a possible benefit if you have any of the genetic markers for lung c…

Yep. My wife has yearly scans because of a tumour supressor gene mutation and last year they thought they spotted something on the ultrasound, so sent her for a CT.

CT showed that it was pretty bad, que months of stressing and worrying about what was going to happen.

Turns out it was a false positive, caused by an accessory spleen looking like a tumour. False positives do happen, and they can be pretty devastating - it took quite a while for her to get back to normal.

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#17

How long until a daily brain scan and body scan is a part of everyone's routine, the same way brushing your teeth is? Problems like these are untreatable if left for too long, but if caught early, there's sometimes hope. The solution seems to be to develop as many types of passive scanners as possible. The problem is false positives. But wasting a month needlessly visiting the doctor doesn't seem that bad.

New ‘lab-on-a-chip’ could revolutionize early diagnosis of cancer[0]

[0] http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-lab-on-a-chip-could-revolution...

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#19

As many HN readers don't have children, they may be inclined to see Nicola's pregnancy as a tragedy of some kind. Truly it is sad that this child will live without its father, but it's also a gift to the world -- a bit of Steven, living on. It will be a continuing gift to Steven's loved ones to have a permanent, living piece of Steven, a continuance of himself after he slips into the eons. When you get that kind of g…

As weird as this might sound, having children has given me a significant sense of relief for similar reasons to those outlined in your comment, even though I'm far from a natural parent (but I'm working at it!)

Being a bit of a paranoid and morbid guy at the best of times, reproducing seemed inherently and intrinsically important to me in some hard to quantify way, and I feel so much mentally better for having descendants. I can't really explain it well though and have chalked it up to one of those messy, animalistic "instinct" things.

Re: From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

#20

I know I'll get downwoted for this, nevertheless .. I don't know how about Steven and Nicola, however I myself would mind having certain intimate moments shared with general public (e.g. overheard phone conversations, etc ..) Having sad that, I feel for Steve's and Nicola family. It's always tough.

No need for the preface - it's a fair thing to say.

I hemmed and hawed about whether to post this article at all for this exact reason. In the end I decided that if I was going to post it I should be both respectful and truthful.

I probably could've worded it better. I probably could've added some disclaimer that this is true as far as I remember, but my memory is fallible.

[Edit, as I hit post too soon]: Either way, I tried to be polite about it. This tragedy struck during a crunch time when a lot of us were feeling the need to rally together in order to make the big win. Any married person who chooses to work late on occasion experiences such a phone call.

To be clear, I didn't hear her end of any conversations. There weren't more than two or three of them that I overheard, and I wouldn't have included anything about them if I thought they were terribly personal.

The struggle between work and home life is something I experience myself. It's just another parallel I can't help but think about when trying to make sense of this situation. Not including it felt like I was leaving something important out of the story.

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