I've seen claims that doctors know how to control pain, and no evidence that it's true in general. (One of my friends has severe neuropathy from no known cause, and heavy duty meds, electrical stimulation, and I forgot what other medical methods have been tried leave her barely able to walk.)
I would like to have a method of recognizing it when someone makes a comforting generalization ("it will get done soon" is a small scale example) to check for evidence. There's a temptation to accept the comfort too fast.
Another angle on doctors and pain control is that you don't always know where to find competent help. A friend who had a major cancer and was picky about being able to think clearly didn't get decent pain control until he was in a hospice.
Some people find that having access to suicide makes a hard life easier to endure.
So being signed up for cryonics shifts my views on life and death, as might be expected.
In particular, it focuses my views of success on the preservation of my brain (everything else too, just in case, but especially the brain). This means, obviously, not just the lump of meat but also the information within it.
If I'm suffering a degenerative disease to that meat or its information, I'm going to want to cryocide to preserve the information (and the idea of living through slow brain death doesn't thrill me regardless).
What I don't know is: given the current state of science, what sorts of things do I need to be worried about?
In particular, I'm wondering about Alzheimer's; does it appear to be damage to the information, or to the retrieval mechanism?
But any other such diseases interest me in this context.
Thanks!
-Robin