[flagged]
Reading your comments, I am increasingly convinced you might have accidentally registered on the wrong website. Possibly the wrong internet. Go read the rules.
Jake Seliger has died
101–110 of 220 posts
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#102The work he did with clinical trials and navigating the system was very impressive. We need more people that are willing to push the envelope on cancer trials. I have my own challenges and his work is greatly appreciated. We still need to beat cancer, all types. Let's keep going where Jake left off.
I agree with you in spirit but would suggest that pushing for more funding of schools, universities, basic research, and applied research is something that we should all be doing. Imagine if all the smart people tried to cure cancer instead of working in Wall Street and Adtech
To put a finer point on this, the capitalistic enterprises that many are very excited about and believe will solve problems via the invisible hand, may not not pursue basic research because you can't demonstrate potential profit in it to an investor.
But of course basic research, including all of its false starts, failures, and irrelevant discoveries, are precisely what lays the groundwork for the for-profit enterprises that come later.
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#103Fuck cancer :(
Indeed. I had never even heard of Jake before the post a few days ago about him going into hospice, so I had no personal attachment to the guy. But even so, reading about what he and his loved ones went through struck me as brutally unfair. Nobody should have to suffer (or watch someone they love suffer) like he did. Not just the disease itself but the extreme measures he had to go through just to try to keep it at b…
Within each form of suffering endured by man, and at the same time at the basis of the whole world of suffering, there inevitably arises the question: why? It is a question about the cause, the reason, and equally, about the purpose of suffering, and, in brief, a question about its meaning. Not only does it accompany human suffering, but it seems even to determine its human content, what makes suffering precisely human suffering.
It is obvious that pain, especially physical pain, is widespread in the animal world. But only the suffering human being knows that he is suffering and wonders why; and he suffers in a humanly speaking still deeper way if he does not find a satisfactory answer. This is a difficult question, just as is a question closely akin to it, the question of evil. Why does evil exist? Why is there evil in the world? When we put the question in this way, we are always, at least to a certain extent, asking a question about suffering too.
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters...
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#104The craziest thing to me is he was still posting up to the very end. I've seen this multiple times in end-stage cancers, my grandfather's pancreatic cancer, he seemed "fine" (other than looking incredibly sick) til the last ~12 hours or so - he was even doing some yard work the day or two before he died. He knew the entire time how much time was left, too. I don't know why I find this so crazy, other than I hope I ne…
> posting up to the very end
8 days ago he posted a random comment about housing in Austin. So mundane.
Life and death are strange. I'm embarrassed to know that if I had 1 month to live, I'd probably still spend a couple of hours a day watching random youtube videos and commenting on meaningless HN and reddit threads.
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link. Bizarrely, the post on Marginal Revolution links to a post from 5 days ago, and it's easy to confirm that Jake was still alive when that post was published. (And, apparently, for almost a week afterwards.) The gofundme appears to be the only source that states he's died, and the MR report doesn't even mention it. (Other than to include a link to it in a quote from someone else.)
This is his brother. He passed away around 8:30pm on Wednesday. He was still reading, writing, hearing from loved ones up until the end.
Hope you and Bess are doing as well as can be hoped for under the circumstances.
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#106Jake's wife on FDA deregulation https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-...
May Jake rest in peace and may his memory be a blessing to his wife and daughter. Their views on clinical trials were understandable given the circumstances. Those regulations were written in blood, miscarriage/birth defects, autoimmune conditions, genetic damage, and other horrors. This is a complicated ethical topic because clinical trials can harm patients and families of patients as much as they can help, and som…
> It's not an appropriate discussion in a memorial post.
When else do we discuss it? This is bound to just disappear into history and the government will carry on with business as usual. I feel now’s the time to get people educated and discussing it at depth, when they care about it.
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a complicated subject. Because those rules are in place for reasons. And some of those reasons are to prevent drug companies from turning the poor into lab rats with no regard to their safety. And I guarantee you, you let "terminal" patients skirt rules, there will be a hell of a lot more "terminal" patients. And I'm sure there are some non-regulation reasons to limit various therapies. They are trying to see…
> But I don't think the answer is let terminal patients take whatever they feel like. I don't think anyone has the moral authority to tell anyone else what they can take, especially terminal patients. I do, however think governments have a responsibility to regulate how drug companies conduct trials so as to minimize harm to patients. This probably has the same outcome in practice, but I find the moral distinction im…
Yep individual rights and autonomy over our bodies are fundamental
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#108@dang can we please unflag this recent submission from Jake?
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#109Jake posted as jseliger on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jseliger He blogged at https://jakeseliger.com/ >, and numerous of his blog articles were submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=jakeseliger.com >. That includes numerous topics, over the past year or so his experience with cancer, often concerning frustrations with the process and mechanism. His essay on agenticness especially strik…
In an August 2023 post about regrets, https://jakeseliger.com/2023/08/12/regrets/ , his last regret is: * Not looking into that thing on my tongue in July 2022, when I first noticed it, but that is very specific to me and probably not generalizable. In https://jakeseliger.com/2024/05/16/the-financial-costs-of-he... , he mentions "...I got a partial glossectomy in Oct. 2022. Mine had some high-risk features, but I was…
Cancer is insidious in all kinds of ways. One in particular is that insight into the current and possible state(s) of a tumor are are really difficult to assess. With all our current imaging and testing capabilities, the human body is still largely a black box. Especially after multiple surgeries, distinguishing new tumour growth from scar and necrotic tissues is difficult.
And ... for suitably aggressive tumours, even what appears to be complete removal ("clean margins") ... often isn't, and what minuscule remnants remain can grow back with discouraging ferocity. I'd visited a friend a few weeks after they'd had a growth removed, and subsequently begun radiation treatments and chemotherapy. In that brief interval between surgery and treatment the lips of the incision had spread apart by several centimetres. That turned out to be an ominous portent.
Second-guessing is also par for the course, and without comparative study it's hard to know if more immediate or aggressive treatment (e.g., immediate chemo in Jake's case) might have helped. Looking up survival stats on particular cancers can be illuminating. The one which took my friend three decades ago still has a < 20% five-year survival.
Re: Jake Seliger has died
#110The work he did with clinical trials and navigating the system was very impressive. We need more people that are willing to push the envelope on cancer trials. I have my own challenges and his work is greatly appreciated. We still need to beat cancer, all types. Let's keep going where Jake left off.
I agree with you in spirit but would suggest that pushing for more funding of schools, universities, basic research, and applied research is something that we should all be doing. Imagine if all the smart people tried to cure cancer instead of working in Wall Street and Adtech
Think about how difficult it is to make a significant contribution in your particular field of expertise that is not about to be done right now anyway because the time is right. Very difficult indeed.
It is the same with cancer research. Not saying the world can‘t be better, but science cannot be done faster, probably.