Re: Pallique & TL 14 Medicine

Kellogg make grunt scratch on skins with flint:
>Herr Metlay hat geschrieben:
>>PALLIQUE: One Ref's version of a world in the Marches.
>>>>Pallique, TL E, Population:  3 billion
>
>[Nasty planet deleted to save the digestive systems of the collective TML]

wimp. |->

>Ah, a very nice little write up of a world, with some good creativity.
>But...
>
>Come on Metlay!  Lighten up!

No. Next?

>A few points:
>I don't have my books with me, but if I recall correctly, limb and organ
>regeneration, cloning et all start out at about TL 9 and are quite
>available by TL 12.  Pallique is TL 14.

True. So? Earth is TL8 and there are people eating badly cooked meat
next to fires and dying of smallpox. As has been argued here many
times before, the TL of a world is its MAX TL, not what the hoi polloi
get. You can bet that the rulers of Pallique have it cushy, but the
same may not be true of the workers.

>Now SURELY, a world with such a large population will surely be able to
>handle the radiation you have invoked.  There must be large hospital's
>capable of handling it.  After all, the settlement's been there for more
>than a few hundred years.  SURELY the medical side of things would have
>evolved to handle the problems you've mentioned.

It has. Kill malcontents and put their organs in cooperative people.
Gets rid of the malcontents and stigmatizes the survivors so they
won't try to escape (people escape from prison all the time, but who
ever ran away from a leper colony?). It pays to remember that these
are not taxpaying citizens of a democracy or unruly serfs of an
autocracy that must maintain appearances before the Duke. These are
criminals, whose exile is a polite death sentence and who are not
expected to ever leave.

>Transplants to handle cancerous cells would be about a TL 7-8 type
>solution, not a TL 14 solution.  A TL 14 society with transplants as
>their major source of medical supplies is kinda like having a present
>day society resort to cannibalism when the corner market is out of food.

Yeah. So? The powers that be LIKE it this way. You can make a headache
go away with an incredibly expensive anaesthetic, or you can give a
guy an Advil. Why spend more on treatments that take a long time when
you can have a guy back to work quicker and cheaper? On Newcomb in the
Solomani Rim, they let cancer victims die. That's REALLY cheap, but the
death rate balances the influx, which wouldn't be the case on Pallique.

>The cost of transplanting organs from one person to another is probably
>higher than it would be to clone a new one.  Think of all the problems
>with tissue rejection that need be overcome.  Not to mention the cost of
>getting it from the donor...  Of course if you're just kidnapping donors
>off the street, that's relatively inexpensive, but it's not gonna be if
>you keep doing it.  The contract to kidnap people is gonna rise in price
>until the  price it is comparable with cloning.  (supply and demand all
>the traffic will bear etc.)

You're not kidnapping donors, you're obtaining parts. Parts is parts.
And I'd argue that it's a lot cheaper to shoot someone full of
antirejective than to grow him a spiffy new liver in a tank for
several weeks or months that he may not have to play with. You can
postulate clean, simple organ cloning a la Star Trek for your Trav
campaigns-- I prefer a drug that stops rejection and the lung they
just pulled out of that healthy young jaywalker down the street.

>I remember (barely) an article on the cost of transplanting organs.
>Basically their estimate was that the 6 Million Dollar Man was dirt
>CHEAP.  I don't remember any of the figueres, but the cost of human
>organs for transplant was HUGE.

*BZZZT* Got yerself here, kiddo. You're applying TL7-8 costs and
science to the economics of transplants. I would argue that when and
if the human race licks AIDS, it will have invented drugs that will
LAUGH at tissue rejection, or at least be well on the way to that
point. You won't even need sterility in some cases; gangrene and
peritonitis will be as common then as bubonic plague is now.

>As to the cause of this mess:  radiation induced cancer...
>Well, it seems to me that the good old nuclear damper could do an effective
>job of shielding the population.  (Very handy those things...  :-)

If you have them.

>There is also, the nicely effective meson gun.  I seem to remember a few
>years back, some people were talking about using a meson accelerator to
>attack cancer growths.  It's a lot more accurate in targeting cancer cells
>than radiation or chemotherapy or even lasers for that matter.  (ZAP!)

If you have them.

- --

Scott, your arguments are valid and well-reasoned for a society that
actually gives a damn about providing the best healthcare for its
citizens in the long run and therefore improving their morale and
productivity. The picture you paint would be perfectly accurate on
Mora or Trin, or even on Regina. But on Pallique, it's a whole new
ballgame, because no one WANTS the workers to be happy or cheerful.
They're being PUNISHED. If they DIE, they DESERVE it. The Imperium
does not, to my knowledge, have a Constitution or a Bill of Rights,
and these criminals do not have a right to the best treatment money
can buy-- they are PRIVILEGED to receive CHEAP treatment that will
keep them alive long enough to do a decent lifetime's work. It's an
ugly truth that rarely surfaces in polite company on Trin or Mora
or anywhere else in the sector; criminals are swept under the cosmic
rug.

But the Rebellion's likely to change all that. Just imagine what's
gonna happen when the Lakht Aorlakht decides to claim Pallique's
riches for the ihatei and wants a solid base of popular support
in-system! |->


- --
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * [email removed]
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I'll survive. Indeed I will. But boy will I ever be confused.  (s. kellogg)