Jun 22, 17 / Leo 05, 01 00:04 UTC

Let's be a team and talk about future of Asgardia Healthcare  

My name is Türker, I'm medical student. 

We need to make a plan about healthcare of Asgardia. If you are clinician, medical student or healthcare worker, you'll be helpful about that! 

Join on Twitter with [Link Removed] or Facebook with [Link Removed]

Let's be a team to shape the future of Asgardia Healthcare. Your thoughts are very important for Asgardia! 

  Last edited by:  Jason Rainbow (Global Admin, Global Mod, Asgardian)  on Jun 22, 17 / Leo 05, 01 07:27 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times
Reason: Removal of link to unofficial group

Jun 24, 17 / Leo 07, 01 11:35 UTC

Healthcare may actually be one of the limiting steps for Asgardia. This egalitarian society with inclusive policies will come up face to face with the reality of remote healthcare and limited resources. The population proposed initially will not sustain a sizeable healthcare facility, a clinic or two yes, but you just won't be able to have anything resembling a hospital initially without huge waste and redundancy. 

Ethical questions will need to be addressed too like who is medically fit/unfit to join those in space and what constitutes "fitness to fly"i the Asgardia context.

Take Multiple Sclerosis for instance, do you take people with MS knowing they are likely to deteriorate or do you restrict their rights because of a condition for which they are completely blameless, and stop them from having the opportunity to make a significant contribution? What about someone with a single episode of demyelination (the pathology behind MS) who by definition do not have MS but are at significantly greater risk of having subsequent episodes (and progressing to MS). 

What about genetics? One of the simplest to think about would be breast cancer gene (BRCA1 and BRCA2) carriers, these VERY strongly predict breast cancer risk- do you screen for those before taking anyone?  Do you screen the men too who may passing it on to their offspring (and who are themselves at higher risk than general male population of developing breast cancer)? If we are going to screen where do we stop? Do we stop women who carry X-linked diseases, who themselves will never have the genetic condition but who have a 50% chance of passing it on to their male offspring? 

When does screening for initial pragmatic reasons due to limited healthcare resources become eugenics?

The ethics of this is fascinating and may well get controversial.

Sep 27, 17 / Sco 18, 01 05:15 UTC

Hello my Name is Fira. I'm a general practitionaire. Well i would join this team to make a health care procedure in Asgardia. This is my pleasure to help you guys. I would help anything. Keep contact

Jun 28, 18 / Leo 11, 02 15:48 UTC

Hello I am a doctor of Orthodonty and Dentist. I would like to be actively in the activities, service, teaching, researching, treatment and anything possible i can do. Thanks in advance, keep in contact.

Jul 8, 18 / Leo 21, 02 23:56 UTC

Hello everyone, you may be interested in a petition I currently have floated:

https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/health-and-safety-83/topic/petition-for-dedicated-ministrydepartment-of-health-in-asgardia-10015/


Hello I'm a Registered Nurse currently practicing in Australia. I also have a background in volunteer para-medicine / first response. I am really excited about the potential we all have, and frankly, sick of everyone talking about it and not getting anything done.

For the mean time, I'm happy to get things started and be a point of contact. Message me with what you can and are willing to do. For example, "I am a Doctor, I can volunteer this much medicine or how much time".

Moving in the future my idea for Asgardian healthcare would be to start small. Firstly, it's our jobs as HCP's to collect health evidence, read it, disseminate it and make it easily accessible for the general Asgardia public. We start by making people realise there is a credible and professional healthcare population. It would be very hard for someone to simply trust someone on the internet with their sometimes very personal/sensitive medical history.

Once we build that trust, we then focus on cheap primary healthcare medicines/treatments or simply education. We have constitutional support in this endeavour. Eat well, exercise. Prevent diabetes etc. We provide this too, on a volunteer/charity basis. Whether we get the support from Asgardian government or not, it doesn't matter. I'm sure we'll find someone willing to donate to these cheap and highly effective ways to improve someone's health. By that stage, it would be very hard for the Asgardian Leader to ignore our seriousness, and hopefully, by everyone we have helped vouching for our integrity.  

From there? Who knows. That's what I propose are our first steps, and I say let's start taking them!