SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
[...] After all, who needs a hole in the head? Yet for thousands of years, trepanation -- the act of scraping, cutting, or drilling an opening into the cranium -- was practiced around the world, primarily to treat head trauma, but possibly to quell headaches, seizures and mental illnesses, or even to expel perceived demons.
[...] "In Incan times, the mortality rate was between 17 and 25 percent, and during the Civil War, it was between 46 and 56 percent. That's a big difference. The question is how did the ancient Peruvian surgeons have outcomes that far surpassed those of surgeons during the American Civil War?"
[...] Whatever their methods, ancient Peruvians had plenty of practice. More than 800 prehistoric skulls with evidence of trepanation -- at least one but as many as seven telltale holes -- have been found in the coastal regions and the Andean highlands of Peru, the earliest dating back to about 400 B.C. That's more than the combined total number of prehistoric trepanned skulls found in the rest of the world.
Source: Remarkable skill of ancient Peru's cranial surgeons
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday June 10 2018, @11:59PM (1 child)
There are different groups of actors involved with different goals. At least some pharmaceutical companies actively refuse to investigate something that would result in a cure for something for which there currently exists a treatment. Other health practitioners look avidly for cures...but many of those can't find funding for the required tests.
It's a complex problem, and I don't see any good solutions, but the current approach gives financial incentives to avoid finding cures. There's got to be some better way.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @02:07AM
The mantra is "pay for outcome" but that road to progress is going to be long and rocky.
🌻🌻 [google.com]