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Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

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Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#221

This is great news! I think people forget how anti-skin cancer protocols even as simple as applying suntan lotion weren't as popular as recent as 50-60 years ago. Lots of "sun children" of the 50s and 60s are now feeling the repercussions of only applying baby oil and are getting hit with lots of melanoma.

My mother always covered up and always made us kids cover up. She still died of melanoma. Sun may increase the risk, but sun cream doesn't make it impossible. Cancer has no friends.

Well done to the drug researchers. I have my fingers crossed someone else gets to avoid this

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#222

In other news, your barber thinks you need a haircut. Until there is a proven net overall health benefit to this therapy, I wouldn't waste much ink on it. Also, can someone please tell me how one controls the dose for an mRNA therapy ?

Cancer treatment is different. We have a high tolerance for side effects because many cancers are aggressive and deadly. It's a risk-analysis. If your odds of dying from cancer in the next year are 50%, and the drugs have a 25% chance of killing you, then the drugs are worth it. In actuality, even extremely aggressive therapies like high-dose chemotherapy with stem-cell transplant have shockingly low risk of death. L…

See my comments below on Vioxx - even the manufacturers admitted covid shots caused myocarditis in young men - why are you so sure this new therapy won't cause the same issues, or worse ?

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Also, just to call out, it doesn't need to be _warm_ for you to need sunblock. Even when it's cooler / cloudier out there you can still get skin damage. Look for UV rating rather than temperature. Conversely, it being hot doesn't imply high-UV either.

I’ve always wondered about this. I have fair skin, and I tend to burn somewhat easily in very sunny environments like the beach. However, I’ve never gotten so much as a whisper of sunburn / suntan / anything on an actually cloudy day where sun wasn’t hitting me directly. Is the damage a different type that’s imperceptible? Or is this a public health comms strategy where they assume people will see a single cloud in t…

The damaging part of sunlight is the UV (Ultraviolet) spectrum. This penetrates clouds more easily than the visible-spectrum light.

So sun obscured != low UV. It will block some of it though.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#224
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are albino (which is a large set of other problems) being in the sun all day will develop enough of a tan that you won't sunburn. There might be a problem in spring, but by summer time most people will have spent enough time outdoors that they wouldn't sunburn. I've always been the lightest person in town (a tie in Stockholm) and I can spend all day outside without any sunscreen and I won't burn on the par…

I don't know about that. I'm a fairly tanned individual, but where I live, in Texas, if I spend all day in the sun, I'm getting sunburned bad everywhere.

That "if" makes me understand that spending all day in the sun is not something you normally do. I've been told by others who live in Texas that you can build up tolerance and spend all day in the sun.

Naturally darker skin does not automatically provide sunburn protection. It is spending time in the sun that adds the missing part that provide that protection. I don't know how this differs from dark skin, but I've seen it myself.

Note that my claims are only about sunburn. The article/topic is skin cancer which may well have different factors from sunburn.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are albino (which is a large set of other problems) being in the sun all day will develop enough of a tan that you won't sunburn. There might be a problem in spring, but by summer time most people will have spent enough time outdoors that they wouldn't sunburn. I've always been the lightest person in town (a tie in Stockholm) and I can spend all day outside without any sunscreen and I won't burn on the par…

Fascinating. Now come and try that on the Arabian peninsula and see how you get on

Are you paying for my mid life crisis? Otherwise my boss expects me back in the office before I could build up the needed tolerance (I'm expecting this to take a month) such that I'd expect to spend all day in the sun without burning.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body. However, that discussion was largely side-tracked by the massive amount of disinformation (eg, "Plandemic") that circulated online. There are people who to this day swear that COVID-19 was just like the flu and simultaneously claim that the vaccine spike proteins have killed around 20M people. Not just crackpots, but people with reach, like…

> There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body. There is a legitimate discussion (dating back at least to Typhoid Mary (1) ) on excluding people from public spaces when they refuse to take basic public health measures. Taking a vaccine for a spreading deadly pandemic is one of those measures. Doing something so violently anti-social is not simply a "bodily autonomy" issue, and framing…

I got the covid shot and every booster. I have no qualms about mRNA messing me up, and I think it was a tremendous life saver. As stated, there was also a ton of misinformation floating around, and people believed that misinformation.

The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information. They didn't see it as being anti social as they thought the drug was a boondoggle, untested, and that covid wasn't serious. I disagree with all of it, but it is important to understand why they objected, and not just saying they are selfish or antisocial.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pale beauty is a phenomenon across geography. What correlation a society works out is largely lost in the cycles of avoiding the sun being a relative luxury until you get expensive air travel.

Again... you are confusing second order effects, with the primary reason. We have an old saying "te rafte pika e diellit", may you get a spot, sun spot, aka cancer from the Sun. People knew excessive sun is unhealthy.... if you could you avoid it during the summer. It was not necessary to make you look 'rich'. Ability to avoid it, meant you were rich. And people wanted to be pale, because you look rich, that is a sec…

The correlation looks right so all people who have rituals like telling their children not to look poor really understand and later communicate the truth? Is this true for religious stigmas related to food too?

I think you are retro analyzing and presuming individual intelligence because this collective result looks right to you. Really, some people understand some risks and many people who can follow taboos they can afford are not exactly sure what they would learn first hand and what part is superstition.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misinterpreting data here. You are conflating the fact that the clinical trials didn't measure infection/transmission (which is very hard to do in a clinical trial) with the distinct claim that they didn't reduce transmission in reality. The vaccines were extremely effective at reducing transmission during the first waves of COVID, where such an intervention was most valuable. And due to viral growth dynamics,…

All I'm saying is if you sum up the time (between vaccine release and today) that a person was strongly protected from covid infection and transmission, it's a relatively small portion of that time. Thats my pushback against gp's argument that you have to give this thing to your young kids to protect me.

I suspect that you and GP and GGP are talking about different time scales.

Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with.

Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them.

Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them.

I struggle to think of a decision or conversation where the relevant metric is "what % of time from vaccination until today were you protected" and I doubt that's what GP was discussing either.

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one control the dose for anything? Why are you worried about mRNA vaccines in particular?

Radiation dose, for example, is precisely measured - we know exactly how much radiation the body is exposed to during therapy. mRNA products work by making our cells produce the desired protein/drug. There is no way of controlling how many cells are producing the drug and for how long they are producing it - ergo there is no way of controlling the dose. I hate to break it to you but they have found people producing s…

Spike proteints: new production or residual fragments?

Re: Moderna reports first positive Phase 3 for mRNA neoantigen therapy in melanoma

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I'm saying is if you sum up the time (between vaccine release and today) that a person was strongly protected from covid infection and transmission, it's a relatively small portion of that time. Thats my pushback against gp's argument that you have to give this thing to your young kids to protect me.

I suspect that you and GP and GGP are talking about different time scales. Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with. Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them. Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them. I st…

> Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them.

Isn't this kinda like saying medicating your children in general is very much the right thing to do?

Like it's obviously one of those things that everyone expects you to just agree with directionally, but the actually correct answer is no, there is no in general. All drugs have a context where they make sense. E.g. you're probably not vaccinating your kids for rabies, unless you live in an animal sanctuary or something. MMR, sure.

It actually seems pretty questionable to me that it was ever a net benefit to your average young kid to get the covid shots.

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