Something I've been wondering. Insane Asylums, What would they be like in 2040 and up, and how would the Corps treat thier truly insane. Granted Cyber and Bio ware can help with most structural and chemical abnormalities in the brain. However even today there are a few cases that can't be "fixed".

Datajack. Permenant simsense.

Depends on the SIN, I would think..

No SIN? Lab rat.
If lab rats are too plentiful, 2 nuyen implant.

SIN? No idea. Can't just vanish someone with a SIN -- unless of course they never do anything off corp grounds

depends on where you happen to go crazy I would guess. Some countries like Azlan I could see having Euthenesia or experimentation programs in effect. The UCAS and the like probably about the same as now. You get ignored and probably live in the barrens if you are sinless. If you are lucky enough to have a SIN you would probably have some sort of advanced simsense therapy.

Using the insane as lab rats would be difficult. If people have the means they tend to sympathize with those they see as helpless praticularly if they see it as not being their fault. There are plenty of SINless criminals to muck around with and stick wires into without the baggage of persecuting the mentally handicapped. There's be much less of a public outcry if a few prisoners with life or death sentances "voluntueered" for experiments.

You guys are too nice to the insane, really. Generally if they're SINless they're one of two things - lab rat or ghoul food. Even the insane people with SINs are going to be lab rats (that what advanced simsense is...testing for a cure - unless they are REALLY rich, in which case they're eccentric and have legions of servitors to obey their every whimper.), but they are lucky to not have the latter option.

using the insane as a lab rat is easy - it's called drugs. Lots of drugs - keep 'em pumped full of sleep aids/concoctions while you do stuff to 'em, then they do what you want. Or pull a bunraku style personafix and you have a useful lab rat. easy enough.

Gritty...gotta be gritty.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned organlegging.

No such thing as "insane asylums" anymore (at least the way folks envision "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), ever since the 80s. Psychiatric hospitals are no longer meant for long-term stays. Even in regular hospitals, it used to be that half the beds were reserved solely for the psych ward. Now, you're lucky to find a dozen beds total for it. Psychiatrists are far more likely to get the patient on a regimen of drugs to control their "X" disease (whatever it is), then have them come in for therapy with a psychologist if necessary. Certain disorders, like personality disorders, are untreatable except through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Most of the other ones (schizophrenia, manic-depressive, major depression, etc.) are fully treatable (at least for the short term) through medicines. The best therapies for most psychiatric disorders is a combination of therapy and meds.

This is pure speculation, but I'd imagine that simsense will be both the bane and the panacea of psychiatry. The bane, because I can see a whole new class of mental disorder stemming from Simsense (variations on current mental illness induced by simsense, as well as BTL-induced addiction/psychoses), and I can see treatment being far more effective for those with mental illness, as a psychiatrist would be able to work directly on one's personality and mind.

On another note, it has been indicated that despite the tech level of 2064, some forms of epilepsy have not been cured, as inferred by the bit in one of the SOTA books where they talk about possibly using Move-by-Wire technology to control seizures rather than causing them.

I felt it was valid enough to do more than imply it.

Based on my experience (as caregiver, not patient thank you very little) there are still going to be the old State Hospitals or Regional Treatment Centers for the really destitute and dangerous. I could see some corps buying them up and providing care (AKA experimenting with mind altering chemicals) for their employees there.

Mental retardation is still going to happen in 2070, and today's system is set up for treating MR and all its associated mental illnesses (in general) in an outpatient setting.

If you want a gritty game, run them through a poorly run mental hospital.

Read up on how the word bedlam got its name and you will see what I mean...

it's not so much that people would be unable to physically turn the insane into lab rats but rather that the public outcry surrounding such a procedure would be too high. Besides there are literally hundreds of thousands of criminals clogging up the prison system and millions of poor shmucks in the barrens who would be happy to get a few wires stuck in their head in exchange for a real meal. People don't care about them. People do on the other hand care about the mentally ill or otherwise disabled. Look at how many home care nurses and the like there are around now and how big the market is for drug companies , like I said for the people with sins at least I just can't picture them doing radical experiments on. It might be somthing akin to

"Mam we have this new drug that might help Jonny, it's still in the final experimental stage right now but that means that the drug provider will give it to us for 1000 a month which your insurance should cover. All previous tests have shown it to be safe and it's just waiting final approval from the FDA"

The previous testers on the other hand would likely be rounded up from the barrens irrigardless of if they were mentally ill or not.

Ah... millions. 2-3 incarcerated, 5-6 million more on parole or probation.

But I still find your assertions that people care about the mentally ill hard to accept.

Wipe the memory and implant a false one?

Or just replace the brain with a computer?

Would solve the problem AI must be well developed by then?

torz x


Note - I could do with that! bwhahahaha!!

Thinking they're shrinking is a disorder? See, I thought that was the second half of normal operation.... man, crazy people are crazy.

Hey, those evil spirits will make your pecker fall off!

It could just be transferral of guilt manifesting in a culturally acceptable outlet.

hmm... what spell is that? wither limb? well, wither genitilia... and have that cast via link. wheee, can you see that being used on a poor PC?

Slow Death in T:AL.


Wouldn't you want to die afterwards?

When I said I wanted to die quietly in bed, what I really meant that sometime in my EXTREME old age while entering the state of senility I want to be trampled to death by an elephant while making love to a ravishingly beutifull pin-up model.

Is she drunk or drugged in this fantasy?

oh yeah, and quietly? Must be doing something wrong with said pin up!

Niether I hope. Never bed a woman who's under the influence, unless it's Chocolate.

Hopefully by the time it happens I'll be 110+ so I don't think I'd be making much noise, her on the other hand...

okay, back to the subject on hand. What to do with the crazies who haven't found thier way to Testing Facilities or Discount Organ bins...

If they have any money, personafx chips.

Replace the crazy personality with a corp-friendly meat droid.

What would it be like, traped in a body that a chip was running?

Depending on who's still fighting who, you might just have stumbled onto a neat source of expendable cannon fodder. Stick a chip in them and send them out to die. Cheaper than training real troops.

Yeah, but then what do you do with them if they win? LOL

Sedate them until they are needed again.

I say we take off, nuke them from orbit. Only way to be sure....

5h17! mean bitch, put the Grifter in charge.

and frickin' eye- lasers!

Then we film an army of those guys on the battlefield and make a Motley Crue music video.

..and then sadly face public outcry for the mis-use of public funds.


Not for making cyber-psycho-soldiers-in-straight-jackets-with-oral-slashers-and-frickin-eye-lasers..


for making a Motley Crue video


And have charges filed for misuse of a corpse.

'cause they're dead

unless Motley Crue are the scariest frickin' IE's

Motley Crue will NEVER die, man. LOL