fat doors and other things

Over the past few years, I've seen so many news reports about morbidly obese people who need to be cut out of their own homes to receive hospital care (see here, for instance) that I think the time has come to propose some solutions.

1. Fat doors. Morbidly obese people, especially those who spend their time trapped and festering on above-ground floors, should pay to have something akin to an airplane escape procedure: a triple-wide door that opens in case of emergency, paired with a slide system that will allow rescue workers to roll/slide/bowl the patient out of the domicile both quickly and efficiently. We can call the doors "Jabba hatches." No more cutting through walls!

2. Amputation nanotech for convenient disassembly and reassembly. I'm stealing this idea from Stephen R. Donaldson and his Gap Cycle. One horrific scene involves a futuristic stripper who does more than strip: she cuts off her own breasts for the amusement of the club's patrons. How does she survive the experience? Easy: she's got nanoclamps on all of her major blood vessels, so when she saws away at herself, the clamps activate and prevent her from bleeding out before she can receive medical attention (such strippers do this more than once, after all). It's a nauseating moment in the series, but it occurs to me that such tech would solve the whole "can't get Fattie into the MRI" problem. Instead of wasting money constructing ever-larger MRI machines, just prep the patient with the nanoclamps and chop him into pieces for easy scanning-- not to mention easy removal from that second-floor bed.

3. In-house ICU. Since most of us are going to end up in an ICU at any rate, I'd say that this solution is applicable to more that just the fattest among us. But since the truly obese will find themselves in ICUs much sooner, on average, than the rest of the populace, I'd suggest bringing the hospital to them.

Just a few modest proposals.


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