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CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

innovativegenomics.org

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Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#3
post #2

I hope this finally works out. I remember almost exactly ten years ago I got excited about one of these proposed cancer cures, tried to talk about it at lunch with my coworkers, and they laughed at me for believing.

I'm pretty optimistic. I think it's a threshold question where we need a number of basic technologies to all get over certain bars before the floodgates start to open.

Over the past 1-2 decades there has been unbelievable progress at the basic technology level but most people are unimpressed because they haven't translated yet due to not individually being sufficient to cause an explosion of progress. IMO, we're starting to see it finally as so many different technologies have gotten so cheap, fast, and good.

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#4
post #2

I hope this finally works out. I remember almost exactly ten years ago I got excited about one of these proposed cancer cures, tried to talk about it at lunch with my coworkers, and they laughed at me for believing.

Real in vivo genetic engineering isn't going away and will indeed be a powerful tool to face cancer. Any particular effort is doubtful because this is a journey measured in decades. It is not the same story as any one particular wonder drug fizzling out to nothing, it is a class of tools that is maturing into the realm of early therapeutic deployment.

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#5
What economic / political model would cause the society to prioritize this over adtech? It seems so unsettling that brilliant human minds are trying hard, every day, to figure out how to make it impossible to bypass watching ads on YouTube, instead of helping cure cancer.

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#7
post #5

What economic / political model would cause the society to prioritize this over adtech? It seems so unsettling that brilliant human minds are trying hard, every day, to figure out how to make it impossible to bypass watching ads on YouTube, instead of helping cure cancer.

I remember seeing a comic strip about this exact argument but I can’t find it any more

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#8
post #5

What economic / political model would cause the society to prioritize this over adtech? It seems so unsettling that brilliant human minds are trying hard, every day, to figure out how to make it impossible to bypass watching ads on YouTube, instead of helping cure cancer.

When you reframe ads as "control of human attention" it suddenly makes a lot more sense why so many resources are poured into them.

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#9
post #5

What economic / political model would cause the society to prioritize this over adtech? It seems so unsettling that brilliant human minds are trying hard, every day, to figure out how to make it impossible to bypass watching ads on YouTube, instead of helping cure cancer.

Humans are a bunch of hairless monkeys that have evolved to scam each other rather than hunt and gather food from Nature.

Re: CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers

#10
post #5

What economic / political model would cause the society to prioritize this over adtech? It seems so unsettling that brilliant human minds are trying hard, every day, to figure out how to make it impossible to bypass watching ads on YouTube, instead of helping cure cancer.

The bargaining dynamics are stacked against biology researchers at every stage of their career, from needing years and years of unrelated performance to be admitted to terribly expensive programs before they can begin to do experiments, to requiring costly equipment and resources to work, to needing to work with a small number of very powerful companies.

As a result, life science researchers are more price-taking than proce-setting when it comes to their wages / salary. If money is the motivator, then the market as-is isn’t addressing this one.

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