Modern technology is so fragile and unreliable.

[theist]

 

<center>M O R E

T O Y S

 

</center>

 

Now!

 

They are all covered by lead paint from China.

[krsnaraj1]

 

They are all covered by lead paint from China.

 

Toys from China are radioactive. They had to cover them with lead!

[Murali_Mohan_das]

Funny, gentlemen!!

 

Further evidence in support of Srila Prabhupada's assertion:

 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045

 

Just think how many folks' bodies may have been killed by standard emergency-room procedure!!!

To Treat the Dead

 

The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks—and death itself.

By Jerry Adler | Newsweek Web Exclusive

 

Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of "clinical death"—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?

As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller "How We Die," the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn's Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine's newest frontiers: treating the dead.

 

Biologists are still grappling with the implications of this new view of cell death—not passive extinguishment, like a candle flickering out when you cover it with a glass, but an active biochemical event triggered by "reperfusion," the resumption of oxygen supply. The research takes them deep into the machinery of the cell, to the tiny membrane-enclosed structures known as mitochondria where cellular fuel is oxidized to provide energy. Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body's primary defense against cancer. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he's lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

(continued)

[krsnaraj1]

 

Funny, gentlemen!!

 

Further evidence in support of Srila Prabhupada's assertion:

 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045

 

Just think how many folks' bodies may have been killed by standard emergency-room procedure!!!

To Treat the Dead

 

The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks—and death itself.

By Jerry Adler | Newsweek Web Exclusive

 

Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of "clinical death"—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?

As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller "How We Die," the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn's Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine's newest frontiers: treating the dead.

 

Biologists are still grappling with the implications of this new view of cell death—not passive extinguishment, like a candle flickering out when you cover it with a glass, but an active biochemical event triggered by "reperfusion," the resumption of oxygen supply. The research takes them deep into the machinery of the cell, to the tiny membrane-enclosed structures known as mitochondria where cellular fuel is oxidized to provide energy. Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body's primary defense against cancer. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he's lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

(continued)

 

I watched that movie Stargate, wherein an alien residing inside the body of a boy had to lay down himself inside this chamber to stop the process of ageing. That`s why the alien maintained his youthful look. Similarly a body severely traumatized or dying if put into that chamber is repaired back to normal. No resuscitations or surgey done whatsoever on that body. Well, it`s just a matter of time when modern technology perfects this type of machine. Then we shall all live forever! Just be careful you don`t get run over by a speeding bouldozer!

[Kulapavana]

The main point SP was making criticizing technology was that modern technology is ultimately unable to solve the true existential problem of death (or in general: birth, death, old age, and disease).

 

Thus it is not that technology is bad, but that it cant help us solve the most important problem on hand: our mortality.

 

The rest of the criticism was directed at wasting precious time on endless gadgetry the technology brings, instead of focusing on spiritual life.

 

The fact that your identity can be stolen electronically is hardly relevant here. Even cave-men can be complete materialists. Lack of technology is not a virtue in itself.

 

Because most devotees miss this point, we are often completely ineffective in our preaching.

[Murali_Mohan_das]

I can barely stand to watch TV these days. It seems so oppressive with all the noise and quick-cutting, and endless talking heads.

 

I watch some movies and occasionally, some TV shows on DVD.

 

My father has been a life-long TV junkie. Currently he's depressed and watching TV up to 20 hours a day. I see the TV as allowing him to endure his mental anguish by distracting him from his cares, but also, I see it preventing him from actually getting any better.

 

Anyways, we all live forever already, right? It's just these bodies that die.

 

To use the car analogy, who wants to be driving around in a 1972 Ford Pinto in 2072?

 

 

I watched that movie Stargate, wherein an alien residing inside the body of a boy had to lay down himself inside this chamber to stop the process of ageing. That`s why the alien maintained his youthful look. Similarly a body severely traumatized or dying if put into that chamber is repaired back to normal. No resuscitations or surgey done whatsoever on that body. Well, it`s just a matter of time when modern technology perfects this type of machine. Then we shall all live forever! Just be careful you don`t get run over by a speeding bouldozer!