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Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

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Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fancy way of saying "communism has never been done properly before." yeah well that's because the execution matters and turns out when you give people power to choose who gets what, they abuse it. go figure.

Maybe it’s never been done properly cause human nature will never allow it to be, e.g. it’s an ideology that’s incompatible with humanity. But surely there’s a more sane option than under regulated capitalism with a problematic wealth distribution and fucked up incentives that encourage short term profit at the expense of society, environment and all else?

then it's a terrible system to govern humans under.

your system should work with human nature or it will never work.

capitalism exploits greed to generate prosperity. socialism falls under greed.

and no there's not a better solution, or at least it hasn't been found yet. if it was it'd still be a form of capitalism, not the other side of the spectrum.

but we disagree on the effects of the current system. capitalism has not been at the expense of society, the opposite in fact. we've had so much prosperity due to it.

same with the environment really. communist countries don't really have better air quality, worse in fact! US has the money from capitalism to develop clean tech.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#122

Previus discussion (from the university press release) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 (498 points | 6 months ago | 140 comments) I'll rehash my comment They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mic…

Don't know about mice, but rats more or less have a 50% tumor/cancer chance if they really do get to live 1+ years. I think for some lines it goes up to 90%+.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#123
post #84

We are destroying ecosystems so fast that there will be no frogs and we will regret it. The same with all the nature

There will, in fact, continue to be frogs. One theory of where posts like this come from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527316123

You managed to break out of the trap!

Thank you for this; I'd not seen it, but needed to.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#125

Previus discussion (from the university press release) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 (498 points | 6 months ago | 140 comments) I'll rehash my comment They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mic…

Cant it be just some immunity reaction induced by the bacteria what would not translate to humans?

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The so-called socialist economies were just the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism. As a child, I experienced the reality of "socialism", where every word used by the ruling elites meant something very different from what it was claimed to mean. Unfortunately, already for more than a quarter of century USA and most "capitalistic" countries every year become more and more alike to the former socialist countries,…

fancy way of saying "communism has never been done properly before." yeah well that's because the execution matters and turns out when you give people power to choose who gets what, they abuse it. go figure.

Communism has never been done properly, because it cannot be done properly.

Communism is an erroneous idea. It starts from a correct premise, that humans who have accumulated much wealth are able to use it abusively for accumulating more and more wealth at the expense of the others, and this positive feedback cannot be stopped without some kind of regulation.

However, the solution proposed by communism is an illusion that cannot work with real humans. The communist solution is to confiscate everything valuable from all citizens and put it under the management of the state bureaucrats, who supposedly will administrate it efficiently and in such a manner as to produce maximum benefits for all citizens.

The reality is that of course the communist bureaucrats are composed of the same people who succeed to become politicians or managers everywhere, i.e. those for whom the priority is to satisfy their own interests and greed, and not the interests of the entire society.

Therefore in all socialist/communist countries, those who were supposed to manage resources in the name of the "entire society" behaved exactly like the owners of those resources, so they lived like US millionaires or even billionaires, while most of the population lived in poverty, because all what their parents or grand-parents had in the past had been confiscated and now they were at the mercy of their managers, who decided unilaterally what they should be allowed to work and what they should receive to be able to live.

The only solution that could work would be the exact opposite of communism. Instead of centralizing everything, the production of at least all the things strictly necessary for living should be as distributed as possible, done by numerous small local companies, not by a few huge global monopolies.

Instead of having 3 producers of memory chips for the entire Earth, there should be at least 3 or 4 in every country. Similarly for any other industrial product.

Unfortunately that is extremely unlikely to happen because during the last decades everything has evolved in the opposite direction.

To continue with the same example, when I was young a large fraction of the European countries were still able to make integrated circuits and computer memories, even many of the East-European countries. But then one-by-one most electronics or computing companies have been bought or closed, until none survived. An important role in the disappearance of the electronics industries in most countries had been that of USA, who used various means of pressure and blackmailing to prevent other countries to enact protectionist measures favoring their internal producers against US companies, i.e. exactly what now USA itself uses against China.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternatives to capitalism are a wide spectrum, ranging from totalitarian dictatorship (aka central planning) all the way to free markets with sensible regulations. What they all have in common is not being capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.

Unregulated capitalism does not exist anywhere on this planet, and the US is in fact quite a bureaucratic country, though less so than many others. "putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest." Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade,…

Regulators being paid off arent actually regulating things you know? Regulation as it is, is extremely flawed and prone to corruption.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#128
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you help me understand how alternatives to capitalism, such as central planning, would necessarily be better at preserving the planet?

The alternatives to capitalism are a wide spectrum, ranging from totalitarian dictatorship (aka central planning) all the way to free markets with sensible regulations. What they all have in common is not being capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.

> capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.

This critique doesn't make sense. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. You're actually a capitalist whether you know it or not and you agree with capitalism at a rudimentary level. Your complaint about "power in the hands of the wealthiest" is a matter of government dysfunction, not the economic system. In fact, the economic system, capitalism, is performing well in spite of the poor performance of the governmental system.

Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway which are often hailed as model countries for livability and "democratic socialist" states are highly capitalistic, and by some measures more so even than the United States.

In this chain of conversation the grandparent wrote something about the 1% destroying the planet. That's a red herring. Everyone jetting around the world taking vacation, buying bottled water, driving cars, eating cheeseburgers, you name it are doing much more actual damage than just the 1% who, while doing a disproportionate amount of climate damage (however we want to measure that) are not responsible for most of the total amount of climate damage. That's not to excuse them, of course, and as a matter of government dysfunction for example ask why luxury goods like private jets or yachts aren't taxed at a much higher rate, or perhaps aviation fuel for private use (I'm not suggesting these are good or bad policies, but just examples at the surface level).

If you want to address climate change you have to not only demand reform across the board, but make personal changes in your own life. If you are unwilling to do that, you'll find yourself in similar company, shouting from the rooftops if only we taxed the billionaires and finding nothing was done to help or fix the situation.

Re: Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unregulated capitalism does not exist anywhere on this planet, and the US is in fact quite a bureaucratic country, though less so than many others. "putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest." Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade,…

Regulators being paid off arent actually regulating things you know? Regulation as it is, is extremely flawed and prone to corruption.

Sure but this wouldn't be an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for reform of government. If you think that regulation is extremely flawed and prone to corruption, then governmental systems including socialism and communism would be even more flawed since they are by definition more highly regulated.
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