But certain caring individuals, mostly at insurance companies, don't like paying for his treatment since it's expensive. And yes, they've recommended and tried to convince him to move to Washington and off himself. In my mind, if you're going to legalize it, that sort of behavior should be a felony.
What insurance companies were these individuals working for? What do they do, call up your father and tell him air fare to Seattle is pretty cheap this time of year? You said people who worked for insurance companies, plural, encouraged your father to move to Washington state, that's pretty amazing, really nearly unbelievable, that people at multiple insurance companies are urging your father to off himself. My wife has been an oncology nurse for forty years. She's had to deal with hundreds and hundreds of people who died, many of whom who took years to do it and cost the insurance companies bundles and bundles of money. I just asked her, and she's never known of a patient or their family say an insurance company encouraged someone to move to a state that has assisted suicide for terminally ill people.
Either possibility increases the likelihood that the disease mutates to become airborne which is a far more dangerous transmission mode of infection than via skin contact.
This whole thread from there down is what is the likelihood of that occurring. What is the likelihood that the current strain of Ebola that is being transmitted person to person will mutate in such a way that it becomes airborne. And by airborne we're talking about it becoming flu like, not being transmitted via large droplets in spit or mucous when a person sneezes. We're talking about small particle aerosol dispersion, like the flu or measles. While viruses undergo frequent mutation, some types of changes are more likely to occur than others. AIDS never became an airborne disease. Measles never became a mosquito borne disease. Yellow fever never became an airborne disease. Small pox didn't change its mode of transmission. If none of these ever changed their mode of transmission, despite millions and millions of more cases than we're likely to see from Ebola, why would the current strain of Ebola do so? What makes this current strain of Ebola an exception to what seems a general rule?
For example, Ebola has made this transition to airborne transmission before. Influenza has been transmitted by diarrhea before. Bubonic Plague is another disease that has managed the transition to airborne transmission. And of course, AIDS was readily transmitted by blood transfusion and shared needle use even though that's not its original mode of transmission. So there's four examples right there, including Ebola itself.
The variety of Ebola that is suspected of being transmittable via small particle dispersal is the Reston variant. It has not been proven that the Reston variant is transmittable by small particle aerosol dispersion, just suspected. It's worth noting that the Reston variant is not pathological in humans. No humans who have acquired it have become ill. The presence of influenza virus in children's diarrhea is not necessarily a new mode of transmission. It may have always been present but no one looked for it until very recently. Just as influenza has shown up in bird shit since forever, it doesn't seem unreasonable that it might be present in the diarrhea of children. From what I've been able to find out it does not appear that influenza has mutated and is being transmitted through a new mode. Pneumonic plague is not a new mode of transmission, and the bacterium that causes it is the same as the one that is transmittable by insect bites. Besides, plague is not a virus. AIDS has always transmitted via bodily fluids. Blood transfusions and shared needles are still transfer by bodily fluid.Every virus that can survive in the blood is transmittable by these means by default. None of the examples that you provided qualify as an example of a virus changing its mode of transmission.
Either possibility increases the likelihood that the disease mutates to become airborne which is a far more dangerous transmission mode of infection than via skin contact.
I have read that viruses don't change their mode of transmission. AIDS, for instance, despite hundreds of thousands of cases, never changed its mode of transmission. Perhaps what I read is wrong, so I'm wondering, how many viral diseases can you cite where the mode of transmission changed?
Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices.
Does this mean that after building about 30,000 devices that a Foxbot will need to be overhauled or scrapped?
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN. -- Alan Perlis