Detweiler Vision vs Beowulf Code: "Right" and "Wrong"

HungryKing wrote:People, prolong does not violate the Beowolf Code, it is not a gene mod, it is a, mostly, single generation, epigenetic change, prolong literally convinces the body not to age. This part of the reason the mesan life extention mods stack with prolong. As for fixing nonresponsiveness to regen, it is not going beyond the natural limits, and in a universe where only a minority of people do not respond, it is pretty much the definition of a disease state.

There is some evidence that epigenetic changes are heritable. Moreover, since epigenetic changes can influence behavior, an argument could be made for a cautious approach to modification.

I wonder how Beowulf and Mesa each views engineering the human microbiome?

n7axw wrote:

Reader Bob wrote:Another thought on the morality issue: Can a murdered person's donated organs be used to save the life of the murderer's sister or daughter? And, as far as medical atrocities are concerned, they weren't limited to the Germans and Japanese during the war. We keep uncovering some of our own from the past. Syphilis patients were given placebos instead of curatives to track the progress of the disease.

That happens all the time. I've known any number of people in experimental programs. There is really no way to estabish that the curatives are curative without the placebos to compare them against. That is normal implementation of the scientific method.

Don

But the people in those experimental programs know they're in a program, know its for treating a specific disease or problem, and know and agree that some of them will randomly be assigned placebos.

Basically none of that was true for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. The participants knew they were in a trial, but were deliberately mislead about it's purpose, were not told they had syphilis (presumably leading to avoidable spread of the disease as participants weren't told they had a sexually transmitted disease), and were not treated for it (the trial was to observe the untreated course of the disease).

The one extremely minor mitigating point is that when the trial began there weren't any actually effective treatments. But by less than a decade later ('46, '47) penicillin was widely available and know to be an effective cure and yet the study continued, without treating the participants, for another 20+ years until 1970

It was very questionable when started and IMHO criminal before it ended. A very far cry from a modern pharmaceutical trial.

jgnfld wrote:It would seem a bit silly and counterproductive to have a mod for a specific purpose like adaptation to a heavy gravity that was NOT locked. Surely the Beowulf Code must recognize that.

I don't follow the logic here. If heavy-gravity planets like Sphinx and San Martin are settled by people with Meyerdahl and similar packages, then they'll mate with others who have those same adaptations, and there's no need for the genes to be locked.

Later, when those people move to normal-gravity planets, they don't need the mods anyway, but locking the mods means they can't ever get rid of those genes, even if they inter-breed with "normals". One Meyerdahler who moves to Manticore, Gryphon, or Beowulf and it's just a matter of time before entire planetary populations are swarming with 'em.

The long-term problem with locked mods is that eventually everyone in the Honorverse will be a Meyerdahl-Winton-whatever, with every locked gene mod that was ever developed (unless matching up multiple locks produces infertile mules or otherwise is prevented somehow).

If the Beowulf Code is to make any sense at all, it has to deal with this "viral" quality of locked mods somehow.

Jonathan_S wrote:It was very questionable when started and IMHO criminal before it ended. A very far cry from a modern pharmaceutical trial.

It was a government test, run by ideological "scientists" above the law. You expect reasonable and sane behavior from them? Have you seen the recent EPA tests where they poisoned kids and sick people with diesel fumes? http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/215909101

Those particular studies "poisoned" the subjects with levels of pollution they would experience on a regular basis in urban environments on smoggy days (~5% of the time). The consent forms stated precisely that and the experimenters did not move outside those levels except in one particular individual case for a total of 6 minutes there was a 20% overexposure.

The "furor"--more generated than reality-based here--is by people who do not want research into the harm caused by what we are turning our environment into to be performed in the first place. That is a completely, utterly, 180 degree different matter from the Tuskegee experiments.

You can bet your last dollar that if the very same interests who are complaining here found that the consent forms were "corrected" to state (as maybe they should be corrected to state): "breathing the air in your community is likely to lead to X, Y, and Z conditions, they would have gigantic complaints about the EPA's going far beyond the data.

Yes, there is most definitely an ideological element here. You just have it backwards: It is an attempt to stifle research likely to come to solid conclusions conflicting with the ideology/interests of the complainers.

Anyone complaining about these studies should also be immediately acting to institute heavy controls on fossil fuel use in all areas--e.g., transportation, power generation, heating/cooling, etc.--on smoggy days to immediately reduce particulate levels. For if there is "poisoning" in the EPA labs, there is truly "poisoning" of the air in our cities.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:It was very questionable when started and IMHO criminal before it ended. A very far cry from a modern pharmaceutical trial.

It was a government test, run by ideological "scientists" above the law. You expect reasonable and sane behavior from them? Have you seen the recent EPA tests where they poisoned kids and sick people with diesel fumes? http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/215909101

aairfccha wrote:

n7axw wrote:That happens all the time. I've known any number of people in experimental programs. There is really no way to estabish that the curatives are curative without the placebos to compare them against. That is normal implementation of the scientific method.

First, if there is an existing treatment, the new is tested against the old not against a placebo.

That's the theory. As the saying goes, the difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference.

The essence of a double-blind test is that neither the patient nor the attending physician is supposed to know which is which. In practice, with modern medicines that have significant side effects, it's almost impossible to do right, especially since the experimenters are probably not going to be allowed to build a placebo with the same side effects.

If you add in an "existing treatment," there may be no way to blind it at all.

Then add in the internet. From what I've heard, there have been situations where people in the program have gotten together over the net, compared information and know pretty well who's getting the real treatment and who's getting the placebo.

JohnRoth wrote:...

That's the theory. As the saying goes, the difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference.

The essence of a double-blind test is that neither the patient nor the attending physician is supposed to know which is which. In practice, with modern medicines that have significant side effects, it's almost impossible to do right, especially since the experimenters are probably not going to be allowed to build a placebo with the same side effects.

If you add in an "existing treatment," there may be no way to blind it at all.

Then add in the internet. From what I've heard, there have been situations where people in the program have gotten together over the net, compared information and know pretty well who's getting the real treatment and who's getting the placebo.

The point he was making is that once any sort of successful treatment regime is established, there is no need for a raw control group any more and so there is generally no placebo control at all in clinical trials of new treatments for harmful diseases/disorders which have known treatments. The previous/older treatment group--the "positive control group"--serves in its stead.

Blinding is far more complex than the simple notions of single and double blind. Researchers are quite well aware of all the factors you mention. See CONSORT (2010) http://www.consort-statement.org/home/ for some of the most up-to-date definitions and practice guidelines with respect to clinical trials. (Fair warning, the docs there assume significant prior knowledge.)

TheMonster wrote:

jgnfld wrote:It would seem a bit silly and counterproductive to have a mod for a specific purpose like adaptation to a heavy gravity that was NOT locked. Surely the Beowulf Code must recognize that.

I don't follow the logic here. If heavy-gravity planets like Sphinx and San Martin are settled by people with Meyerdahl and similar packages, then they'll mate with others who have those same adaptations, and there's no need for the genes to be locked.

Later, when those people move to normal-gravity planets, they don't need the mods anyway, but locking the mods means they can't ever get rid of those genes, even if they inter-breed with "normals". One Meyerdahler who moves to Manticore, Gryphon, or Beowulf and it's just a matter of time before entire planetary populations are swarming with 'em.

The long-term problem with locked mods is that eventually everyone in the Honorverse will be a Meyerdahl-Winton-whatever, with every locked gene mod that was ever developed (unless matching up multiple locks produces infertile mules or otherwise is prevented somehow).

If the Beowulf Code is to make any sense at all, it has to deal with this "viral" quality of locked mods somehow.

This is a good point. I'm not certain what could be done about it. Honor even mentions to White Haven in IEH that most everyone on Sphinx is a genie because of the locked nature and dominant heritability of the heavy-world genetic mods.

However, your point on overlapping mods potentially interfering with one another has merit. We've already seen just such interference between the Meyerdahl mods and the regen therapies (although there isn't a reproductive component to it).

Amaroq wrote:
However, your point on overlapping mods potentially interfering with one another has merit. We've already seen just such interference between the Meyerdahl mods and the regen therapies (although there isn't a reproductive component to it).

This touches on one of my initial concerns. Is there a possibility that unforeseen changes can negatively and horrifically occur within the interaction/interference between mods in successive generations? *Life somehow finds a way. (*What movie does that reference?)

cthia wrote:
This touches on one of my initial concerns. Is there a possibility that unforeseen changes can negatively and horrifically occur within the interaction/interference between mods in successive generations? *Life somehow finds a way. (*What movie does that reference?)

Jurassic Park FTW!