Medical Treatment
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Medical Treatment |
Because of the vast diversity of physical entities that exists across Terragens space, there can be problems with providing them with medical treatment should it be required.
In a great many places throughout Terragens space polities legislate that people always carry with them either their full medical details and/or sufficient, often implanted, medical systems resources to allow them to maintain and repair themselves.
Precisely how much medical systems-ware (medical nano) is carried to maintain homeostasis varies with the individual, and what they (or their polity) consider to be the optimum. Medical systems to deal with trauma and abrupt damage can be more of a problem, both because the systems require energy to work (which can divert energy the body needs simply to stay alive) and also generates waste heat, which raises the possibility that the system can, conceivably, cook a person as it repairs them.
There can also be problems and surprises in less cosmopolitan areas and on the fringes where the full details of all of the types of entity that exist are not known. Obviously this tends to be far less the case in angelnetted polities, where such information is generally maintained or obtained as a matter of course. However, there are also some angelnetted polities whose citizens do not see a need for such precautions, either deliberately or subconsciously considering the whole universe to be angelnetted, and thus safe.
Additionally, there are a legion of approaches to repair, renewal and health care across Terragens space. Some people and/or polities prefer corporeal repair if it is at all possible. Some are content with cybernetic or other forms of body part replacement if required. Others are happy to simply upload and be done with it.
All this does not even begin to scratch the
surface of the problems
that can arise between polities and groups, where the
attitude of a visiting sophont requiring medical treatment may be totally
at odds with those of the people around it. In many cases, visitors
have to either agree to abide by local rules (this is often the case in
more draconian polities, which can thus come to be labeled as 'biont
unfriendly' in most major travel guides and the like), or make their
wishes known or available to the locals so that they may be abided by
if required.
Baseline-level medics usually cannot cope with the full range of sophonts they might encounter without significant mental, and sometimes physical, augmentation, perhaps to SI:1 or above 'idiot' savant level. Dedicated expert systems are also used to assist, as well as dedicated referral systems.
For this reason, many civilizations and polities simply do not employ baseline medical staff, relying instead on higher-S entities, and/or dedicated expert systems. Some higher-S entities simply ensure the repair of all injured sophonts within their polity. Other polities have no choice but to use baseline medics, or do not wish to control that aspect of their citizen's lives.
The expert and referral systems used in medicine are normally viewed as a very good idea, and many of them have replicated across different polities via their Known Net interfaces. However there have also, in the past, been problems with accidental or deliberate corruption of the medical databases while replicating them across the Net. For this reason most polities insist that only validated information and databases are used in the treatment of their citizens.
Even in areas where it is not legislated that people carry their own medical systems many sophonts, particularly of the rarer or more unusual types, often carry their full medical and/or structural details with them, just in case.
For those less trusting of receiving medical treatment from others, carrying a full suite of self-repair systems - medical nano and so on - is common.
SI:1 or greater medical systems can often figure out a new entity type from scratch in time to save them, but mistakes can still happen, especially with higher S sophonts on the very rare occasions when they require emergency treatment. Infectious diseases and metabolic conditions are one area where mistakes can easily be made, particularly when the subject relies on a symbiotic microflora or microfauna relationship.
To cope with trauma and abrupt damage that their carried or implanted medical systems cannot cope with, many sophonts use some form of 'bailout device'. In many cases this will simply override the bodies normal function, acting to keep the brain alive at the expense of everything else. In other cases this is an implant, often carried just inside the base of the user's skull, that monitors its wearer's vitals and, in case of life-threatening injury, uploads the person by destructively scanning their brain, in a pinch cannibalizing the surrounding tissue to fuel itself as it goes along. This will then leave the implant carrying information on the entity's body (normally loaded in advance) and a static 'snapshot' of their consciousness, all of which can be transmitted or retrieved ready for the person to be recreated.
In the vast majority of polities the concept of the hospital is vastly outmoded. Self-treatment for disease, poison and minor injury, usually by entity self-monitoring and repair below the conscious level, is the norm. Even if some form of specialized medical treatment is required, for example for trauma and abrupt damage, it is far more likely that a medic would visit the patient rather than vice versa. This is because of the inadvisability of moving an injured patient, and because in the current era a single person can easily carry enough equipment to treat an injured person, including nanomachine power sources and the means to ensure the victim is not cooked by the medical systems healing it.
Essentially, for all but the most serious trauma, the hospital comes to the injured person rather than vice versa, and the social skills of the medic are at least as important as their medical skills. For the most serious injuries, any large-scale general assembly facilities can be programmed to provide all of the medical resources required.
Given the ease of doing so, in most polities this sort of comprehensive medical service is provided as cheaply as running water, though others do require everyone to participate in or hold some form of health insurance.
Crashcache - Emergency medical/disaster survival device designed to safely contain the mind-states of multiple numbers (sometimes very large numbers) of sophonts.
Bailout Device - backup device intended to actively preserve itself in an emergency, if necessary by finding a new host
