{"id":15505,"date":"2011-05-13T07:25:06","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T13:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15505"},"modified":"2011-05-13T07:25:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T13:25:06","slug":"gar-lipow-i-have-cancer%e2%80%94a-personal-meditation-on-technology-sustainability-and-social-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15505","title":{"rendered":"Gar Lipow: I have cancer\u2014a personal meditation on technology, sustainability, and social context"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Gar Lipow<br \/>\n12 May 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I  have cancer, but thanks to modern medicine, in terms of health it may  be no big deal. The surgeon will use a scalpel to remove a thin layer of  tissue from the floor of the mouth along with a tiny bit of the  connection to the tongue. Then a laser will cauterize it, minimizing  bleeding, killing microorganisms that stray from my mouth into the  wound, and sealing off nerve endings, reducing soreness. The\u00a0 surgeon  has\u00a0 asked me several times not refer to this as a \u201cslice &amp; sear\u201d.  Since the odds are the cancer is encapsulated, they will send me home  with pain killers and antibiotics and after a week or two that will  probably be that.<\/p>\n<p>But it takes a truckload of advanced technology to make this no big  deal. Before anesthesia was first invented in the 19th century, the  shock and pain of the operation might have killed me (assuming a  pre-anesthesia dentist or doctor could have diagnosed the problem at  this early a stage). Today\u2019s anesthetics have much lower odds of killing  me that ether would have. Similarly, large scale commercial production  of antibiotics was an early 20th century invention. Lasers only became  useful for medical procedures beyond eye surgery in the late 20th  century.<\/p>\n<p>People like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.endgamethebook.org\/\">Derrick Jensen<\/a> who want to eliminate technology want to let me, along with billions of  other people, die. Since extreme anti-tech sentiment is small but with  an intense following it is worth engaging a bit.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2011-05-11-i-have-cancer---a-personal-meditation-on-technology\">Click here to continue reading &#8220;I have cancer\u2014a personal meditation on technology, sustainability, and social context&#8221; by Gar Lipow<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gar Lipow 12 May 2011 I have cancer, but thanks to modern medicine, in terms of health it may be no big deal. The surgeon will use a scalpel to remove a thin layer of tissue from the floor of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=15505\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-425","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15505"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15511,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15505\/revisions\/15511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}