X-Message-Number: 5103 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #5101 - #5102 Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 10:24:08 -0800 (PST) Hi! About having government do research, medical or other: 1. There ARE ways in which individuals can have their individual say in what medical treatments etc they receive. These require, of course, something like one or more bodies (nongovernmental) which check on these new developments and report their opinion to subscribers or the public at large. More than one such body, of course, will help filter out any biases held by only one. We have an example in the organization which publishes Consumer Reports, which tests products to see how well they perform. I will say, though, that that particular organization has been VERY shy of doing such a thing as reporting on vitamin or drug preparations --- they've followed the FDA line completely. But that doesn't exclude the existence of another organization doing exactly that. As for such problems as intergenerational issues, or cases in which one side (the recipients of a treatment) cannot even speak for themselves, I do not know ANY method, governmental or not, which could really be said to solve that problem --- though governmental bureaus will of course loudly claim that they have solved it. But how are we to know what someone who is now unborn, and may never be born, would have chosen? Is the government able to poll such people for their opinions while we are not? 2. Democracy in science is a far more slippery subject than Dr. Stodolsky's posting suggests. Here is a simple analogy: scientists are our eyes and ears and nose. All three organs can be depended upon to sometimes tell us things which are very unpleasant and which we would prefer not to learn about. HOWEVER, if we insist on being ignorant about these things, we may find ourselves in far worse trouble than if we had been willing to keep our eyes open, ears and nose ready. We know, of course, that governmental science budgets are affected by all kinds of pressures: lobbyists, religious groups, business groups, etc etc. I cannot really claim that the present situation is better than one in which we also had citizen's boards passing judgement on particular research projects. It's just different. And over the last 30 years the US government has found itself a major supporter of research. We might get better use out of our "eyes, ears, and nose" if the government (as a single entity) supported no research directly at all. Instead we might have a wide variety of funding agencies which would collect the money which now goes into taxes and spend it on whatever research their members and/or supporters want. (If you are really concerned by the ozone problem, what keeps you from giving donations to PRIVATE agencies which do research on it? --- and incidentally, I personally think that both CO2 and ozone are problems which definitely need attention). The problem with any single group or agency supporting most research is that the biases, one way or another, will express themselves in the research supported. And those biases extend even into such things as physics. Right now, the major money for research into fusion power goes into very large tokamak style reactors. At the same time, if you go looking through the physics literature, you will find a multitude of proposals for fusion reactors of all sizes and shapes. Of course, if the only reactors possible are the large ones, that will tend to buttress any large organization which ultimately claims to run them --- as for instance, a government. I will not discuss here the biases in research on genetics or biology, some of which should be well known. And naturally, I doubt very much that we will see any government-supported research into cryonics or antiaging treatments until both movements have essentially won their point to a majority ... not something which will easily happen without scientific research into both. If you see that as a chicken and egg problem, then you are forgetting that research need not be funded by any government. Best wishes, and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5103