On 27/3/23 11:10, Jonathan Clark - jonathan at att.net (via tml list) wrote:
> Jim Vassilakos asks:
>
>> What are some incurable illnesses that are likely to still exist even
>> at high tech levels?
>
> Ooh, excellent question. Some random thoughts from the top of my head...
>
> 1) Old age. IMTU Humans tend to live until around 120-150, with a very
> decent quality of life, until "a short while" before the end. "Short"
> might be weeks or years.

Looks like you're assuming golden age (from later on in your post) -
where do human races with predispositions to longevity (eg pureblood-ish
Vilani, Daryens, etc) fit in?

Given old age being considered a disease/disorder, where do senolytics
(medicines that clean up the debris of metabolism aka aging damage) fit in?

If you look at most firstworld life tables today, IIRC, you see a
minimum hazard rate around 11-13 years of age that, _if kept constant_ ,
would result in high 3-digit / low 4-digit life expectancies. Of course,
old age (in reliability terms) sets in around 15-16 and the hazard rate
doubles every 8 years or so from there.

IIRC, there's seven major classes of aging damage suffered by us
baseline Terrans (the ones that happen fast enough to knock us mob off
today - there may well be more, but we keel over too quickly for those
others to have an effect).  Cancer is only one of them.

At a population level, making preventative senolytics widely available
would keep the population healthier and paying taxes for longer - along
the lines of an ounce of prevention being worth a ton of cure.

>
> 2) Serious (physical) injuries. For purely thematic reasons my
> auto-docs come with a dozen lights on them, each green/yellow/red.
> Recovery from three red lights (or some appropriate combination) is
> very very rare.
Nice, I like that - might pinch that for another game I'm running.
>
> 3) Infection by 'hitherto unknown micro-organism" from
> "un-/under-explored planet X". Again, purely thematic.
Always a good way to keep the pot stirred.  At a polity level, wouldn't
the enforced quarantine of Jump (over millennia) select for nasties with
long latent periods?
>
> 4) Food poisoning. I'm thinking some equivalent of eating fugu
> (blowfish) in Japan. The locals can handle it but "innocent guy off
> newly arrived starship", who might have been hazed/goaded into trying
> it, cannot, with fatal results.
>
> 5) Excessive cold-sleep - let's say more than 10 years continuous
> (vary this number as you might think appropriate). Crews engaging in
> long-term repetitive cold-sleep will tend to 'be under' for (say)
> three months at a time, followed by 2 weeks fully awake, repeat as
> necessary. The higher the TL, the more the down-time can be extended.
So you're handling the radiation damage inflicted by the cold-sleeper's
own body to itself?  Would make for some interesting Frozen Watch
shenanigans.
>
> 6) Some types of genetic fragility - I'm thinking of things which
> would express _in utero_, before it's possible to pop the foetus out
> and stick it into an auto-doc. After that things like CRISPR/Cas9 with
> a few thousand years development can take care of pretty much anything).
Following along the "few thousand years development", wouldn't the
capability to _fix_ most cases of that imply being able to _screen for_
such cases, ntm risk factors leading to it?  In our timeline today,
genetic counselling is available for such wonders as sickle-cell anemia,
Tay-Sachs disease, etc - that capability would probably advance in parallel.
>
> My question: in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" Universe there
> exist uterine replicators. AFAIK this do not exist in the OTU, but
> they do seem like a logical thing for someone to have come up with,
> especially at TL... (fill in your favourite number here). Has anyone
> ever thought about including these in their TU? I realize this is not
> a gearhead question, but I'm a story-telling GM :-)
>
Can't say I've thought about that in either the Naturallyverse or
Advisoryverse - the latter is ISW era, former is GT golden age.  Such
gubbins would simplify colonisation efforts, definitely.
Hmm...  in the Advisoryverse, the People's Republic of China or the
Republic of India (or both) trying a hundred-million-yammerhead lift to
artificially seed another hubworld out beyond Teapot (which might light
the fuse towards such technology).  I'd expect widespread gasting of
Ziru Sirka flabbers upon hearing of it.

Alex