/2017

The Opioid Epidemic Might Be Even Worse Than We Realize
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/08/the_opioid_epidemic_might_be_even_worse_than_we_realize.html

Headlines about the opioid epidemic come with often staggering reports of the numbers of deaths, of overdoses, and of lives saved by Naloxone. According to data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 52,404 total deaths in 2015, or 144 drug overdose deaths per day. Overdoses are now considered the leading cause of death of people under the age of 50, according to a New York Times analysis using preliminary data.

As staggering as those numbers are, though, there are many reasons to believe the numbers we have are unreliable. One recent study estimated that due to variations from state to state in filling out death certificates, opioid deaths may be underreported nationally as much as 24 percent. If that is true, it’s dangerous: It means that we aren’t fully grasping what is already considered an epidemic or responding appropriately. To help fight this epidemic, we need numbers that are accurate and reflective of the current moment. Community-based coalitions can have a stronger impact if they have access to timely, accurate data that reflect the situation on the ground.

In April, the CDC presented a report explaining that opioid-related deaths might be underestimated for several reasons. For one thing, many autopsies show pneumonia as the cause even when the toxicology report shows a high level of opioids in the body. Furthermore, coroners’ guidelines state that a death can only be classified as an overdose if the toxicology report shows a certain blood level. That may seem reasonable, but drug levels can drop fairly quickly after death. If the medical examiner doesn’t do the autopsy soon enough, the toxicology report may not be accurate. In addition, rural counties faced with strained budgets don’t always do toxicology reports due to cost, and without a toxicology report, a death can’t be labeled as an opioid overdose.

Lastly, lots of people die in ways that are related—but difficult to formally connect—to opioid addiction, like suicide or car accidents caused by driving while under the influence.

Sci-fi doesn’t predict the future. It influences it.
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/05/sci_fi_doesn_t_predict_the_future_it_influences_it.html

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/05/170418_FUTURE_MaryShelly-Frankenstein.jpg.CROP.promo-large.jpg

Predicting the future is a mug’s game, anyway. If the future can be predicted, then it is inevitable. If it’s inevitable, then what we do doesn’t matter. If what we do doesn’t matter, why bother getting out of bed in the morning? Science fiction does something better than predict the future: It influences it.

If some poor English teacher has demanded that you identify the “themes ” of Mary’s Frankenstein, the obvious correct answer is that she is referring to ambition and hubris. Ambition because Victor Frankenstein has challenged death itself, one of the universe’s eternal verities. Everything dies: whales and humans and dogs and cats and stars and galaxies. Hubris—“extreme pride or self-confidence” (thanks, Wikipedia!)—because as Victor brings his creature to life, he is so blinded by his own ambition that he fails to consider the moral consequences of his actions. He fails to ask himself how the thinking, living being he is creating will feel about being stitched together, imbued with life force, and ushered into the uncaring universe.

Many critics panned Frankenstein when it was first published, but the crowds loved it, made it a best-seller, and packed the theaters where it was performed on the stage. Mary had awoken something in the public imagination, and it’s not hard to understand what that was: a story about technology mastering humans rather than serving them.

In 1999, Douglas Adams—another prodigious predictor of the present—made a keen observation about the relationship of young people to technology:

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Internet social networks were already huge before Facebook: Sixdegrees, Friendster, Myspace, Bebo, and dozens of others had already come and gone. There was an adjacent possible in play: The internet and the web existed, and it had grown enough that many of the people you wanted to talk to could be found online, if only someone would design a service to facilitate finding or meeting them.

A service like Facebook was inevitable, but how Facebook works was not. Facebook is designed like a casino game where the jackpots are attention from other people (likes and messages) and the playing surface is a vast board whose parts can’t be seen most of the time. You place bets on what kind of personal revelation will ring the cherries, pull the lever—hit “post”—and wait while the wheel spins to see if you’ll win big. As in all casino games, in the Facebook game there’s one universal rule: The house always wins. Facebook continuously fine-tunes its algorithms to maximize the amount that you disclose to the service because it makes money by selling that personal information to advertisers. The more personal information you give up, the more ways they can sell you—if an advertiser wants to sell sugar water or subprime mortgages to 19-year-old engineering freshmen whose parents rent in a large Northeastern city, then disclosing all those facts about you converts you from a user to a vendible asset.

#Science_fiction #SF #futur