Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 55 posts

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#21

Post by beambot »

AstralStorm wrote: post #8
RankingMember wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some "life extension" site forum had a group buy for the stuff apparently. People posted some of their results: http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/68589-isrib-group-buy-n... One quote: So far I'm very much surprised about the effect on the overall cognition. My personal experiences are, that ISRIB definitely has it's effects on memory consolidation, but in my experience it doesn't only influence the long term memor…

Sample size of 1, no blinding, no verification of the substance received. Quite worthless. Placebo effect is strong enough children recognised as more intelligent by chance do act and measure smarter.

Many major innovations occurred from individuals experimenting on themselves. In fact, it's one of the few ways to make progress when you have overbearing regulatory agencies.

You should be glad that many enterprising "sample sizes of one" are willing to become anecdata for everyone else. They push the boundaries so that maybe, just maybe, we get the benefits of these advances within our lifetimes rather than after many generations of careful study (ie. too late for me).

Carry on, intrepid experimenters! Some of us appreciate your reckless abandon.

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#22

Post by philipkglass »

iconjack wrote: post #6

Isn't Flowers for Algernon required 7th-grade reading anymore? This isn't going to end well, people.

I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans.

But it's also worth remembering that the trope in fiction of $REALLY_GOOD_THING turning out to be $BAD_THING in disguise is just that, dramatically convenient fiction. There's no natural "game balance" to the universe. Yet popular entertainment is very small-c conservative about human improvement; if vaccines were still the stuff of fiction rather than daily life, a TV drama would show that universal prevention of smallpox has some terrible side effect that turns out to be worse than just letting people get infected and die. Fortunately we know that to be false but it won't stop dramatists and those shaped by them for immediately looking at newer biomedical advances with the most crushing cynicism.

(Not really directed at you, since I take it you're joking a bit, but this was the comment that prompted my thoughts...)

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#23

Post by beambot »

philipkglass wrote: post #22
iconjack wrote: post #6

Isn't Flowers for Algernon required 7th-grade reading anymore? This isn't going to end well, people.

I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. But it's also worth remembering that the trope in fiction of $REALLY_GOOD_THING turning out to be $BAD_THING in disguise is just that, dramatically convenient fiction. There's no natural "game balance" to the universe. Yet popular entertainment is very small-c conservative about human…

> I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans.

What about the contrapositive... How many substances fail in mouse studies (and are discarded), yet would have been viable in humans? Any known examples of this?

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#24

Post by philipkglass »

beambot wrote: post #23
philipkglass wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. But it's also worth remembering that the trope in fiction of $REALLY_GOOD_THING turning out to be $BAD_THING in disguise is just that, dramatically convenient fiction. There's no natural "game balance" to the universe. Yet popular entertainment is very small-c conservative about human…

> I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. What about the contrapositive... How many substances fail in mouse studies (and are discarded), yet would have been viable in humans? Any known examples of this?

I don't know off the top of my head of any drugs that work in humans but have intolerable problems in mice. I do know that some substances are much more toxic to other mammals than to us. For example, acetaminophen is very toxic to cats. Theobromine is much more toxic to dogs and cats than to humans. 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin is rapidly lethal to guinea pigs at a level that might only cause skin problems and/or reproductive defects in humans.

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#25

Post by blacksmith_tb »

criddell wrote: post #16

What's the difference between healing a brain and just generally improving a brain?

A semi-facetious question, perhaps? Healing at least is a return to a baseline, "generally improving" is more subjective. I would tend to expect that changing any system as complex as the human brain would have the potential for improving some things, while impairing others. Not that it would impossible to find a compound that only produced changes we considered positive, without any we considered negative - just unlikely.

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#26

Post by simonsarris »

beambot wrote: post #23
philipkglass wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. But it's also worth remembering that the trope in fiction of $REALLY_GOOD_THING turning out to be $BAD_THING in disguise is just that, dramatically convenient fiction. There's no natural "game balance" to the universe. Yet popular entertainment is very small-c conservative about human…

> I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. What about the contrapositive... How many substances fail in mouse studies (and are discarded), yet would have been viable in humans? Any known examples of this?

Well, we certainly are lucky we didn't test the drug "chocolate" on dogs first.

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#27

Post by Houshalter »

hinkley wrote: post #18
iconjack wrote: post #6

Isn't Flowers for Algernon required 7th-grade reading anymore? This isn't going to end well, people.

At some distant point in the future we will understand biology so well that we can see the ways in which evolution produced local maxima for certain processes, and we will be able to see alternate versions that are more optimal but would (almost) never evolve on their own. At that point, we will indeed be able to create artificial molecules or genes that make brains more efficient at using oxygen and sugar to produce…

The human brain uses up 20% of our energy. There may be easy ways to increase intelligence, that evolution avoided because it costs more energy. But in the modern world constraints like that don't matter.

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#28

Post by vibrato »

AstralStorm wrote: post #8
RankingMember wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some "life extension" site forum had a group buy for the stuff apparently. People posted some of their results: http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/68589-isrib-group-buy-n... One quote: So far I'm very much surprised about the effect on the overall cognition. My personal experiences are, that ISRIB definitely has it's effects on memory consolidation, but in my experience it doesn't only influence the long term memor…

Sample size of 1, no blinding, no verification of the substance received. Quite worthless. Placebo effect is strong enough children recognised as more intelligent by chance do act and measure smarter.

It may not be science but it's not worthless. Where do we get our testable hypotheses from?

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#29

Post by sp332 »

philipkglass wrote: post #22
iconjack wrote: post #6

Isn't Flowers for Algernon required 7th-grade reading anymore? This isn't going to end well, people.

I would guess that you are right simply because most drugs that initially show promise in mice fail during clinical trials in humans. But it's also worth remembering that the trope in fiction of $REALLY_GOOD_THING turning out to be $BAD_THING in disguise is just that, dramatically convenient fiction. There's no natural "game balance" to the universe. Yet popular entertainment is very small-c conservative about human…

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/

Re: Can a molecule that makes mice smarter heal a human brain?

#30

Post by unimpressive »

FTA:

"To Walter’s dismay, some are buying ISRIB online and ingesting it, long before it’s been extensively tested...

Some outside scientists remain skeptical. They warn that interfering with vital cellular mechanisms, as ISRIB seems to do, could lead to a host of dangerous side effects. They caution that it will be years, or possibly decades, before it’s ready for testing in humans."

Cause, meet effect.

Post reply on HN