en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/9/5/67b608d1a96c4692d39344787765bcf4.html
Rather than trying to answer why, I prefer proposing a similar solution: rapid prototyping for space exploration and medical science. I was looking at Idealabs' Desktop Factory company, thinking that there's something there that has potential. Also, Lego's Lego Factory software which allows people to model something in 3d, send it off to Lego and have your model be ready. But this is the thing: we need something that is easy to help us manufactur goods instantly. Kinda like scripting for physical objects. You build part of the machine or gadget and with your prototype generating machine, you get your object in real space. Take for example a phone. My phone has two major flaws: one button occasionally turns Yahoo browsing on by accident and another button constantly tries to exit when I'm writing an email. Perhaps my gadget machine and prototyping software could allow me to redesign my phone so I can place those buttons elsewhere.

Now take those ideas and apply them to space exploration. Maybe you can prototype your own rover. Obviously, it means that you won't have a complete environment to simulate having a rover travelling through hostile Martian environment, but imagine the commercial implications for that.

I think we already have a form of medical science scripting; some people might call it Methlabs and such. But if somehow tools were provided for people to allow people to diagnose themselves and treat themselves, maybe we wouldn't have to wait for a cure for AIDS and the like. I feel that medicine reminds of the days before all the kiddies got involved in the internet and that only the highest calibre professionals could makea difference in computing. But all you really had were the Microsofts of the world controlling the output. So maybe we're holding ourselves back by allowing only a few elite to participate in these fields.

Imagine if there were some notions of Design Patterns for medicine. So some hack can still learn how to be a genetic architect without all the years in a lab.

Either way, I know we're missing something. There's something blocking the faster progress for these areas. I think part of it is the teaching methods and forcing kids to go through this long, arduous and somewhat pointless route rather than allow people to use shortcuts in a meaningful manner. I'm not saying cheating is the best strategy, but if you get positive results and it helps society, then why not use them?]]> Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:31:03 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/9/5/67b608d1a96c4692d39344787765bcf4.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/14/999b572b4133726c43ce8121d26febcc.html
Since my dad passed away, I had some time to think over the whole situation. I think if the health care system was better in America, he would've had a chance. However, because he wasn't insured and my family was paying through social security, the doctors provided him with horrible treatment. We'd frequently receive calls about how my dad would throw up or get sick in the summer. For god's sake, he was in a nursing home in Southern California and he'd get sick! That says a lot.

I'm quite certain if he were someone famous or one of these people who had a ridiculous some of money to pay for his treatment, his stroke would've been treated and he would've done fine. It's like that movie John Q and the scene where John Q spotted the doctor who was talking to his pals who had better money and thus would receive better personal care. I have no doubt in my mind that this is a reality.

What's more insulting is that my mother has a $400k medical bill that she obviously will never pay off. My poor dad died because the stupid hospital and staff couldn't provide proper treatment. Why should my family owe these people any money for rotten service? It's one thing if my dad had a gunshot wound through his heart and had been bleeding. But it seemed that the doctors barely monitored him.

Then I found out that my dad, just before he passed away, had gone to the hospital across the street from his nursing home to be treated for a fever. Later apparently he died of sickness because, according to the doctors/nurses, "they couldn't find a vein to inject him with medication/whatever." Excuse me? You're trained professionals. You're telling me that with all your experience, you couldn't handle a simple case? Then the doctors/nurses played it off with (feigned) surprise. I have no doubt that these people didn't give a crap because they were 1) incompetent; 2) not paid enough to treat my father with proper care.

Here's a message to American medicine:

FUCK YOU!!!!!!

You killed my father, you let him suffer and I'll never forgive you. You deserve to bear my eternal grudge and a curse that your profession will be driven off the face of this earth due to your unbearable greed and the fact that America's healthcare system is driven by politics rather than sensibility.

People equally deserve the right to the same level of treatment no matter what their economic status. Medicine and health ought to be a service granted to people in the world on an equitable basis. Obviously, America does not feel that way and treats it simply as economics and capitalism. I don't give a rats ass how much you fuckers studied in college or how many late nights and ulcers you got just trying to get into medical school. While the people in IT have done a superb job in trying to advance the lives of people, I've seen no cure for AIDS, cancer or whatnot. I just see large numbers attached to medical bills. Your ancient practices and ways of thinking are what causes the whole politics of medicine. The only people truly advancing the arts of medicine are those in IT because we are the ones providing the systems, databases, and technologies to make these idiots do their jobs properly. And they can't even get that right.

My challenge to the true future practitioners of medicine is this: find your equivalent of Open Source and Social Medicine. What Open Source, social computing, and the internet have done to free IT from the shackles of companies like Microsoft, medicine must also break from their bond of ancient ways of thinking. Forget forcing students to study useless subjects like evolutionary biology if they're going into medicine just to provide some useless professors' with job security. Forget the MCAT and elitist mode of entering into medical school. Forget studying the long, difficult ways of thinking like Organic Chemistry, physics, etc. Medicine needs their short cuts like the perl/CGI, the HTML, the PHP and Mysql to make their profession useful.

We need revolutionary kids building medical solutions in their homes with nanotechnologies, 3D prototypes, etc. We need to bring down the barriers to entry to let a new generation of people into the medical profession. Maybe we need to even outsource medicine oversees since American doctors enjoy being overpaid and thus requiring a threat to their professions to make it more compelling to do a good and qualified job.

In any case, what's available in America is unsatisfactory and unacceptable. I have no problem flaming the practioners in America and I have no problem receiving their ardur. They don't deserve an ounce of my respect. I consider firemen to be real heroes by comparison. If you want my respect back, do something to change this situation rather than being the greedy, BMW driving, snobs that rob needy people of their money.]]> Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:28:19 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/14/999b572b4133726c43ce8121d26febcc.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/5/f9b545291f60b43b35f73ac1f463494e.html
All things considered, the fact that the computer industry has little history compared with the medical one says a lot. It's disgusting watching companies put out products that have little visible benefits whereas an iPod can give one instant gratification. I mean, I was using this drug to help my leg which has some sort of excema. I spent over a thousand dollars for that along with this other drug to help my keloid problem on my chest. Did any of these conditions improve? No!

Compare that to a system I helped build for trading tickets online at Ticketmaster. Various artists can benefit from that as can online resellers. It took me less than a year to build my piece of the system.

One key thing that Grove pointed out was that the tech industry delivers and has schedules. To put it bluntly, we work hard and have real milestones. Researchers in labs just perform random experiments for their own intellectual fulfillment without caring that billions of people are suffering and dying depending upon their coffee breaks!

One piece of insight that I didn't know about but I conjectured that Grove mentioned was that the medical industry faces these patent issues and a huge force to get grants. There is a community that prevents people from getting through, which means that progress is slowed. I didn't realize something like this existed, but it makes sense. To me it seems that this organization is a perverse institution that has more interest in self-preservation than in producing medicine that people truly need.

I hope this serves as a wake up call to the world of medicine. But I think that the barriers of entry must be thrown down just as how development in the online world had been thrown down by the advent of the web. ]]> Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:33:20 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/5/f9b545291f60b43b35f73ac1f463494e.html