Catastrophic Success

Pedro Gonzalez

Dec. 21, 2011, 7:14 a.m.

Mr. Mauldin you wrote on 12/20/201 Outside the Box E-Letter, Catastrophic Success the following stement “... my interest in the potential for biotechnology to be completely transformational and disruptive (in a positive way) to society.” What society? The top 1% earners of developed countries societies?

Gerald Ferguson

Dec. 20, 2011, 7:17 p.m.

A valuable article, but I don’t understand the reference to “intellectuals’ as not knowing about failings in our economy. Authors, composers, scientists, artists, musicians, are not who I think of with knowledge of Wall Street or the housing market.  Instead, economists and politicians are more to the point, and they do not spring to mind as “intellectuals”.

Barry Mannefeld

Dec. 20, 2011, 7:04 p.m.

I don’t see this as so catastrophic John.  In fact, if it is as you write it, the productive life of Americans could be extended enough to solve the demographic problem.  Also, the high costs of dying could be put off for several years, shifting the annuity payout backwards, allowing for more accumulation.  Third, we would have a systematic liquidation of savings that would allow for the transfer to the younger working generation.  I would have to examine this last thought.  Most productive people in the US don’t quit working until they have to, from what I have seen.

Paul Accampo

Dec. 20, 2011, 7 p.m.

We have more cancer today because we are living long enough for our teleomeres to run out, enabling it to develop. Curing all cancers with a drug will allow more of us to live longer, but bring on the next cause of death, increasing medical bills and bankrupting Social Security. At some point we have to acknowledge that we are not immortal.

Keating Willcox

Dec. 20, 2011, 6:30 p.m.

The entitlement problem will solve itself. Medical services will start to follow a Amazon.com like pattern of customer choice and intense competition. And, all of us will be working far longer than 65. Plus, many older folks will find less expensive forms of long term care, and spend their retirement outside of nursing homes.

I think our real problem is the large number of working age people who are unable to perform at good technical jobs of this economy. How does a 9th grade drop out ever make enough to provide a decent living and pay taxes as well.

garry madaline

Dec. 20, 2011, 3:16 p.m.

It’s amazing to me that you can get this much information together in such a short period of time. You have an incredible knack for getting to the heart of most matters and then give another point of view from someone that doesn’t subscribe to your wisdom. I recently passed on your catastrophic success article to my daughter (a doctor) and my 93 year old father’s oncologist. This information is incredible but most important is the opportunity that is being given to us to straighten out a very sick economy that has been made sick by people with personal (get re-elected, make me rich) agendas. I would love to hear your wisdom on how to change the powers that be to those who want to move forward for the good of mankind. Don’t take this as a liberal attitude as I am quite conservative but more of, at the risk of sounding corny Star Trek. Thanks for the hard work and keep it up. I have a newsletter I send to people with 401(k)s and I would like to send them information to link up to you if that’s possible.

Larry Brown

Dec. 20, 2011, 3:13 p.m.

There has been a “general purpose” cancer test available for at least 20 years.  It is 95% accurate wth one test and nearly 100% accurate with two tests.  It is 0% accurate it specificing where the cancer is (which is why doctors do use it).  It costs $200 and is called the AMAS test.

Michael Gorback

Dec. 20, 2011, 3:09 p.m.

BioTime is a “story” stock and the story keeps changing. See http://www.johnmauldin.com/outsidethebox/want-a-new-cardiovascular-system/. The stock was about $8 then. In the past week or so it has moved from $3.50 to $5.50.

Now they are cancer-detection company.

Before going any further let me state that I am a physician with over 30 years in practice. I have lived through all sorts of medical fads, including the fads for easy tests for cancer.

This is not a simple straightforward process. PSA for prostate cancer screening has had its ups and downs - lately mostly downs. The thinking is gradually coming around to abandoning PSA as a screening tool because of the high false-positive rate.

My family had its own experience with the ovarian cancer marker CA-125 when someone developed postmenopausal bleeding. Uterine biopsies, hysteroscopy and ultrasound were negative but a subsequent CA-125 was 3X normal. The family was in total panic and an appointment with an oncologic GYN surgeon was arranged.

I was suspicious about this because CA-125 can go up for reasons other than cancer. I reasoned that with all the jiggering around with multiple biopsies, a trial of hormone therapy, etc, the CA-125 was artifactually high. I asked for a repeat that came back normal.

So these tests can INCREASE the amount of unnecessary medical care one receives, and not all of that medical care is risk-free (very little medical care is risk-free; perhaps one could argue that none of it is). If I hadn’t pressed for a repeat CA-125 we were probably looking at an exploratory surgery and hysterectomy/ovariectomy.

BioTime’s markers might be truly game-changing technology but it has yet to even undergo clinical trials. This is still just a “story” stock. After reading the fluff about BioTime I didn’t bother reading the rest of the so-called analysis.

Dan Ross

Dec. 20, 2011, 1:02 p.m.

Fascinating technology.  The concluding observation regarding pushing out retirement age is only half of the issue.  The obvious conclusion is that people must be intellectually capable of continuing to be productive, employed citizens. 

Today we face the paradox of both age discrimination in the work force AND inter-generational competition for jobs.  Today, employers look at the difference in experience and the difference in price.  It ends up being a simple decision in many cases for a broad class of jobs.

Although it would be nice to posit a world where all people have the entrepreneurial attitude and ability to change during a potential century of employment, I don’t see this happening.  Maybe it will evolve on its own but I don’t see anything other than anecdotal evidence that it is beginning.  You know, all the great stories of people sky-diving at age 90 and beginning new careers at 70.  Like it or not, the bell curve governs the human population.

(John, I know you like Asimov.  Remember the Settler worlds and their robots!)

At the end of the day, I think this is the biggest challenge, not the technology.