X-Message-Number: 32953
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:24:57 -0700
Subject: Re: Scott Locklin and technological progress
From: MARK PLUS <>

Brian Wowk endorses Scott Locklin's observations about the failure of
technological progress in Cryonet #32937:

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32937

I have to disagree with Locklin's assessment of medical progress since 1959:


>Medicine? Surgical techniques are unarguably better now than 50 years ago, but 
they're not terribly different either. And compared to what was developed 50 
years prior, not so impressive. I hope humans can learn to do amazing things 
like grow new livers in 50 years, but I'm not optimistic at the prospects. 
Drugs? I can't think of anything in the last 50 years which was as cataclysmic 
as the invention of antibiotics. Most of the drugs since then have done little 
more than give people excuses to behave badly. We're certainly not any healthier
now, just more dependent on medical intervention to keep us alive and 
functioning.

We do enjoy better health now on average, but not for the commonly
assumed reasons. Modern health care doesn't have that much to do with
health, according to Robin Hanson's research. Antibiotics, for
example, did not produce a "cataclysmic" discontinuity in the
mortality rate, which has declined steadily over the past century for
reasons independent of health care:

Fear of Death and Muddled Thinking - It Is So Much Worse Than You Think

http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf

I've had to start taking an ACE inhibitor (Lisinopril) to lower my
blood pressure after the branch retinal vein occlusion in my right eye
back in June. It produces a measurable decline in my BP, but Hanson's
essay causes me to question whether the pharmacological attack on risk
factors for cardiovascular diseases makes that much difference in the
health of populations.

-- 
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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