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My Left Kidney

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Re: My Left Kidney

#231

Post by JeremyNT »

abainbridge wrote: post #122
inglor_cz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the risk of dying from the screening exam was 1/660" For someone as smart as Scott Alexander, this is an astonishing mistake. If CTs were such death machines, we would have seen a worldwide epidemics of CT-related cancers. There is no way you can cover up such a strong signal, given that people are screened all the time. Edit: thanks for unleashing such an interesting debate. I guess the problem is in my perception.…

The paper he links to [1] broadly agrees with his statement, eg "An estimated 1 in 270 women who underwent a coronary angiography CT at age 40 will develop cancer from that CT (1 in 600 men), compared with an estimated 1 in 8,100 women who had routine head CT at the same age (1 in 11, 080 men)". 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4635397/

> The paper he links to [1] broadly agrees with his statement, eg "An estimated 1 in 270 women who underwent a coronary angiography CT at age 40 will develop cancer from that CT (1 in 600 men), compared with an estimated 1 in 8,100 women who had routine head CT at the same age (1 in 11, 080 men)".

Develop cancer, or die of cancer? Alexander seems to be claiming the latter.

Re: My Left Kidney

#232

Post by Avshalom »

lusus_naturae wrote: post #216

I skimmed over this so I am unsure if this was addressed in the article: what if you donate an organ to an asshole? If they're weak or sickly, there is less chance of them being an asshole. However, a recovered and healthy asshole has relatively greater chance of subjecting the world to themselves. The above may appear to be a crude (and maybe overly harsh and pessimistic) argument against organ donation, but I strug…

What if I save a nazi's life is an argument that can be used against anything though.

Re: My Left Kidney

#233

Post by makeworld »

mort96 wrote: post #117

This was an enjoyable read. The solution of giving people money to donate their kidneys is terrifying to me however. I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. Of course, if inequality was dealt with and nobody was desperately poor, it would be a different question. If everyone had enough money to comfortably get by, and the extra $100,000 from a kidney donation wo…

The post mentioned a tax credit though. In theory the poorest people would benefit the least from this. But there could still be issues as you increase your income, I agree.

Re: My Left Kidney

#234

Post by bdzr »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #207
JacobDotVI wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some screenings have gone direct to consumer in the US. Fairly easy to purchase online, make an appointment, then show up for a quick collection. https://www.ondemand.labcorp.com/ https://www.questhealth.com/sale Quest is even running a sale right now on some tests!

There are also at-home versions like this YC company https://siphoxhealth.com (full disclosure, I have a conflict of interest here)

cries in New York

Re: My Left Kidney

#235

Post by elromulous »

unholiness wrote: post #28
elromulous wrote: post #26

Can anyone (with a better understanding of radiation risks) confirm the math for the added mortality risk from a single CT? I know a CT is a lot of radiation, but the mortality risk seems very high.

His footnote says as much as I could: > Maybe. Kind of. Our knowledge of how radiation causes cancer comes primarily from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we can follow survivors who were one mile, two miles, etc, from the center of the blast, calculate how much radiation exposure they sustained, and see how much cancer they got years later. But by the time we’re dealing with CAT scan levels of radiation, cancer levels are so…

The non linearity intuitively makes sense. If I (naively) assume that DNA has some built in correcting codes (iirc it at least has some redundancy), one would be able to damage it up until the error rate that can be corrected without any deleterious effect.

Re: My Left Kidney

#236

Post by germyj »

johnfn wrote: post #98
BobaFloutist wrote: post #8

I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.

It's easy to say in retrospect, but it's not like all the movement ever did in it's entire existence was buy a single castle. Do you really think they were expecting EA to explode in the public consciousness after the SBF thing and to have all of their line-items exhaustively audited for what could make the best outrage-bait article? That's quite a black swan event.

>to have all of their line-items exhaustively audited

Historically, yes, that's the entire point of the movement. Audit everything in the goal of doing the most good and not wasting money on frivolities. The auditing approach faded as the movement has grown and became more longtermist, though I (somewhat) expect it to come back now that we're post-ZIRP, post-SBF.

Re: My Left Kidney

#237

Post by cvalka »

caturopath wrote: post #24
cvalka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your spouse does not oppose your decision to donate your kidney to a random person, get a divorce asap.

This is why no firefighters are married: people don't want their spouse to take any risks to save others' lives.

Comparing the two makes no sense. Your "analogy" is silly beyond belief.

Re: My Left Kidney

#238

Post by germyj »

Aurornis wrote: post #54
BobaFloutist wrote: post #8

I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.

The way this post leaves no room for debate about how the decision was good and paints all of the people who disagree as ignorant outsiders feels very disingenuous. There was a lot of criticism coming from inside the EA community, too. It became taboo to criticize it with multiple EA figureheads (author of this article included) making definitive statements that any critics were wrong and the decision was unequivocal…

I have found it somewhat... amusing... how this decision resulted in downgrading the entire community discussion section at EA Forum.

Re: My Left Kidney

#239

Post by jhugo »

kqr wrote: post #105
pcthrowaway wrote: post #67

While I've appreciated some of the author's articles in the past, I think the numbers in this one miss the mark quite a bit. > the risk of dying from the screening exam was 1/660 > The usual rule of thumb is that one extra Sievert = 5% higher risk of dying from cancer, so a 30 mS dose increases death risk about one part in 660. Well not quite. First of all, this assumes that exposure events are additive over a lifeti…

> a number of lifestyle changes: healthier eating, quitting alcohol, staying out of the sun. On the other hand, maintaining these sound like a much larger effort than avoiding one CT scan. (That said, they do have other benefits so they might still make sense.)

Staying out of the sun has significant downsides.

Re: My Left Kidney

#240

Post by varnaud »

mort96 wrote: post #178
fritzo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that makes "giving people money to donate their time " so much less repugnant? Is it that time is finely divisible, whereas kidneys come in twos?

It's not necessarily much less repugnant. The fact that rich people can spend their time doing whatever they want, while a lot of people have to burn themselves out working two jobs to make ends meet, is abhorrent. However, the ability to make ends meet through selling your organs is a line most societies haven't crossed, and I'd prefer to keep it that way to be honest. And for better or worse, we do tend to see a di…

As always, society will push a problem caused by its economic system away by making it illegal and create a new one in the black market.

Sourcing organs is an especially difficult problem since for the people needing one it is a literal matter of life and death. I wouldn't be surprised if people travel to countries where buying organ is legal/easier.

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