[squigz]

> I agree would be a great thing to be able to do but seems to be a much further along than the words cure or prevent would indicate.

If the words "cure" or "prevent" don't indicate that, why did you bring it up? :)

I think this is being needlessly pedantic. Keeping in mind that one of HN's guidelines is to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of a comment, I think we can assume that GP meant, essentially, "learn enough about these diseases so as to detect and prevent them from causing irreparable damage"

[bryanrasmussen]

sorry but the strongest plausible interpretation of the word cure is obviously not "prevent", it is to undo the damage.

>If the words "cure" or "prevent" don't indicate that, why did you bring it up? :)

the strongest plausible interpretation of my comment would be I brought it up for the reason I said - that if you could cure the disease you would have to be able to give anyone the capabilities the disease destroyed (because these diseases seem to destroy parts of the brain so even if you "brought back" the brain it would be a different brain with different data in it)- and that, although I did not state it, I felt that the original poster had not considered this when they expressed a wish to cure.

on edit: obviously if you have experienced minor damage you can get back to what you were before because the brain has a lot of redundancies and it can recover if decline is halted, but if you have experienced major damage you're probably not getting back and asking for a cure there seems unlikely to work.

[ElevenLathe]

The "disease" we're talking about here is death. Von Neumann was losing his mental capacity because he was dying. I know some in the silicon valley set think that "curing" death is both feasible and desirable but I disagree on both points.

[sinenomine]

A voice from outside SV (mine): We can extend life and prevent disease in animals and should do the same in human beings. As much as the West has exclusive access to biomedical R&D, it's an ethical imperative for the West to pursue this goal on behalf of humanity as a whole.

You invented noblesse oblige and should measure up to it.

[tough]

no death is just part of life, there's no life without death.

the disease would be alzheimer, and curing it would mean probably preventing it / being able to edit the genome to nullify whatever gen is making it come up in the first place (if its genetic)