X-Message-Number: 18979 Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 09:56:56 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #18974 - #18978 For George Smith: Generally I enjoy your postings because you say things simply that others may be shy to say. However on the issue of disease I will add some points to what I said, since clearly it must have caused confusion. First, some diseases now are known to modify our DNA. To fix them we must have a version of the patient's CORRECT DNA. If the incubation time is long enough, we may only have the incorrect version: imagine a disease that waits for 200 years before showing itself. We may ALL have it and never know the difference (this is a counterexample, not a serious proposal). To modify our cells so that they work "optimally" contains within it lots of possibilities for error. Just what do you (or I) define as optimal? Was it their original function or a modified "optimal" function? For that matter, what is optimal for one person living in one setting may not be optimal for another living in another setting. If we propose to use nanobots to fix ourselves, we must know how to CORRECTLY define optimal. If we fail to do that, we once more get ourselves into problems (thinking again of programming errors). This moves us into the simple fact that not all conditions counted as diseases come from viruses or microbes. What about cancer or heart disease, to name two such diseases. Yes, how and where we live may affect development of both kinds, but no amount of clearing out viruses would help either (except in special cases). Underneath your argument I would say that you make an assumption which I was explicitly doubting: that somehow we could not only make repair nanobots, but that we could direct them PERFECTLY to deal with ALL possible conditions. Even if we give them their own programs to direct themselves, those programs can (and in real life DO) contain errors. If we try to direct them more closely, with the nanobots only containing very simplest programs, we get to blame ourselves for the errors. Those errors essentially give us one more new disease, to be dealt with as we've dealt with others. Will our ability to cure our diseases (however a disease is defined) increase with time? Yes, certainly. Yet that's not the same as perfection and never will be. We may well even find ourselves in a time in which most diseases come from mistaken repairs made earlier by doctors working with more primitive nanobots (that made errors the doctors then did not detect). I do not believe that we'll find ALL possible diseases to result from such errors, however ... unless you have a very broad definition of error. If we continue to explore the universe, we'll find new settings not previously predicted, and those new settings may cause errors in US, even if our bodies could deal well with all the previously known conditions. Radiation poisoning provides an excellent example of how just such things can happen. But I will repeat: I am not saying that our ability to deal with diseases will not increase. It WILL increase. It's just that asking for perfection here will never get a yes answer. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18979