Richard Aiken wrote:
 > Yet gravity and inertia seem to operate largely in matching
 > extra-slow time, since his characters don't have to deal with
 > objects or their own bodies moving too [subjectively] quickly.

Doesn't make any sense. Varying subjective time and metabolic rate is
reasonable for a pharmaceutical, provided there are countermeasures for
the predictable complications (e.g. temperature, coagulation, infection).
Varying local laws of physics is grossly overpowered.

Ken Barns wrote:
 >  (I always found the modern or SF RPG maps of "doctor's offices"
 > in a rural town, or on a starship, containing a single consultation
 > room and an operating theatre a bit of a giggle.)

In the near and far future, everywhere looks like 1950s small town U.S.A...

 > Fast Drug would be used as an adjunct to intense emergency
 > interventions in specialist centres.

The latter describes much of my professional work (FCICM FANZCA and all
that). I disagree.
Slowing someone's metabolism by a factor of 'x' for big X screws up
clinical assessment and (judging) response to therapy.

 > Presumably if Cold Sleep is used to "stop deterioration", then that
 > is also going to stop most diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.
 > If we make the assumption that what we are doing is going to fix the
 > patient despite dire situation, then we might want
 > to slow that process down, but we don't want to stop it.

Using ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation, a heart-lung machine
for the non-medics) as an example precursor technology to cold sleep,
you put people on the pump prior to cooling them down.

It doesn't matter if they have an arrhythmia because you're supporting
the circulation.
It doesn't matter if their lungs don't work - you're oxygenating the blood.
It doesn't matter if there's a hole in the circulation - you keep
filling them in the imaging department/operating theatre/emergency
department until the leak is demonstrated and controlled or you run out
of blood products and IV fluids.

Is the situation salvageable with local resources?
Salvage, decide whether to come off the pump, or cool and transfer.

Not salvageable with local resources?
Decide whether to "Freeze 'em and ship 'em out" or palliate.

 > Your antimicrobials can't treat an infection if they are not
 > being circulated to the site of the infection, and if the
 > microorganism is not actually metabolising the antibiotic.

Unless fast drug is a omnicidal antibiotic, your immune system is slowed
by 'x' times and the bacteria eat you anyway.

There's no reason fast drug should slow all your commensals, or
infection causing micro-organisms. Otherwise you could use it as a
universal antibiotic - slow down the germs but leave the immune system
at normal tempo!

 > I often have to manage patients in "slow stream rehab" for a few
 > weeks before they are up to entering more intensive rehab.
 > Still, even then the "slow stream rehab" process is not necessarily
 > a passive process.

I'm trying to get them from the "not fit for a haircut" stage to where
we can think about rehab.
I can see a real role for something like slow drug there.
Sorry. Professional cynicism skewing my views again.

Rob O'Connor