RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] predicting the future

["Hargus, Diana" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

* -----Original Message-----
* From: EMAIL:PROTECTED 
* [mailto:EMAIL:PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick
* Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 1:25 PM
* To: MLUG Off-Topic Discussion
* Subject: Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] predicting the future
* 
* Mike Miller wrote:
* > 
* > Yes.  How long until we can create robots that look and act 
* > indistinguishable from people?  It won't be happening in the 2020s.
* > 
* Are you defining a robot as a mechanical person constructed 
* of metal & plastic or a person "constructed" by altering the 
* genetic structure. If you'll recall, the only way to tell the 
* difference in the movie was studying behavior patterns and 
* responses. The replicants were machines because they had been 
* engineered, not because they were made from spare VW parts.
* 
* > 
* > History shows that the flying car is always farther off 
* than you think 
* > it is.
* > 
* 
* http://www.moller.com/skycar/
* 
* Looks like the car itself is here...now for the hard part, 
* government regulation.
* 
* > 
* > I don't agree.  As soon as someone discovers a cure for cancer, he 
* > will start to use it to make money - tons of it.  If he hesitates, 
* > someone else will make the discovery and revenues from treatment 
* > patents will dry up.
* 
* If it were that simple to "make the discovery", someone would 
* have done it already. You are, of course, free to disagree 
* with my cynicism, but if you think the forces that control 
* our society want everyone to be cured of everything with a 
* single shiny pill, then I would have to be very shocked at 
* your naiveté's.
* 
* It's sizably more profitable to construct a self-renewing 
* revenue stream than to charge even exorbitant one time 
* prices. I have not one single doubt that if an R&D scientist 
* at Big Time Pharmaceutical Co. discovered a cure for cancer, 
* they're very next major project would be how to dilute it 
* down so it merely stemmed the progression of the cancer.
* 

Kind of like the cash cow that diabetes has become?  

"Diabetes costs $90 billion annually in direct medical costs. Diabetes costs $40 billion annually in indirect costs (loss of work, disability, loss of life)." -- 
http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/patientcare/healthinformation/diseasesandconditions/diabetes/statistics/

That is $90 billion; granted, not enough to fight a war, but still not petty cash either.  And with 298,444,215 people in the united states (07/2006 est), it is rather cheap per person at $301.56 per year, but that is every year.

By the way, why is it that everyone dies from complications of this disease or that disease, never from the disease itself?

Diana 
 
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