Medical/Technical Staff

Does anyone have any insight into the "Cold Winter" that Bianchi refers to when talking to Belisario in Chapter 59?

No idea. The guy testing Claes' heart noted he was able to perform experiments and studies in the Medical / Technology group that medical ethics standards would not permit, so it's possible some of them were performing human experimentation and research that was not ethically, morally and/or legally permissible and that is why they came to the SWA.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/cold-winter

The enemy AI probably gave him a hard time, like it did me.

Kiskaloo wrote:No idea. The guy testing Claes' heart noted he was able to perform experiments and studies in the Medical / Technology group that medical ethics standards would not permit, so it's possible some of them were performing human experimentation and research that was not ethically, morally and/or legally permissible and that is why they came to the SWA.

Thinking on this more, maybe this "Cold Winter" refers to things like the ban on fetal stem cell research during the Bush Administration in the United States or the ban on human cloning.

So the medical staff, wanting to do things that medical ethics standards and/or public opinion would not permit in academia or private research, came to the SWA because there were no prohibitions or limits on what they could do.

While I wouldn't say that it's stem-cells specifically - in the previous page which leads into this exchange Belisario's talking exclusively about the mind, man's inhumanity to man, and emotional control - I'd agree that he was probably restrained from doing something which the Agency has given him free rein to do. The art in the "did that experience influence you" panel looks like a science team posing for a staff photograph, so I assume that whatever they were working on, it all ended in tears...

Robert Frazer wrote:While I wouldn't say that it's stem-cells specifically...

My comments were along the lines that this was an "Era of No" where many things - including cybernetics, mind control and behavioral programming that are relevant to the cyborg program - were not allowed to be researched or were very controlled. Or the people performing the work, like the South Korean Human Cloning team - were treated as pariahs by the rest of the medical community at large.

i think it has to do with budgetry cutbacks,the Italian budget comes out in October ,but is put into operation on 1st January,virtually all medical research done in Italy is government funded,a few years ago the cutbacks got severe, as a result the brain drain in Italy is enormous, 6,000 scientists a year are leaving for other countries !

That could fit... Bianchi does mention "hardships" - perhaps literal, physical ones? Bianchi has four doctorates, so he sank at least twelve years of his life into advancing his expertise - but despite sacrificing a significant proportion of his life to training, and plunging himself into massive expense, a dearth of projects (the 'cold winter' in question) leaves this genius figure and others like him in a similar state of penury to a pauper on the street, having invested much for no return. This helps create a somewhat misanthropic view of mankind's myopic tendencies ("I am despairing at humans") before the Agency offers him a lifeline.


If that's the case, though, it does present its own question - why didn't Belisario follow the brain-drain out of Italy? And if he's frustrated because no-one seemed to appreciate his genius, does that make him a narcissistic mad scientist? "Those fools threw me out - now they'll listen!"

he got laid off ,but then got hired by the SWA,maybe they arranged his jobloss ? mind you Italy does have more professors with Tenure than any other EU country,but hardly any other job places available for those without it !