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New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

news.keckmedicine.org

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Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#141

Post by MisterMower »

beowulfey wrote: post #56
MisterMower wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because ROI on that investment is still positive, even if it used to be “free”. 2) Endowments aren’t the only way to fund research, and not all research is equally valuable. Some is probably negative value, given the replication crisis. 3) Investment income from the endowment is taxed at a maximum of 8%. If that’s enough to break the US university research machine, I’m not sure it was ever working in the first pla…

Thanks for your comments. The ROI is not positive because there is no guarantee basic science will lead to any money-making outcome. That's not how basic science works and it is never how it worked, but basic science is absolutely crucial for advancing tech. If you can convince shareholders that it is e.g. worth investigating unusual crystal structures with no intended product in mind then people will gladly share so…

On the frontiers of knowledge, people furthest out know what problems need to be worked on and what research needs to be done. You don’t need the government blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping that one of them hits a bullseye and calling it “basic science”.

I’m open to the idea that government can play a role here, but only in a very small way. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research. They are such a huge consumer of talent and resources that they are crowding out private initiative. This ain’t Bell Labs of the 1950’s. And if you asked those researchers what they think of today’s system, I’m sure they’d be appalled.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#142

Post by ltbarcly3 »

tptacek wrote: post #136
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't slag the article? I gave constructive reasons the title could be better.

Apparently without reading the article!

yes, that was my entire point. why are you having so much trouble with this?

The title doesn't have enough information to inform us whether reading the article is worthwhile. If I actually read the article or not doesn't change whether the title has enough context to inform us whether we would want to read it. How are you not getting this?

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#143

Post by laughing_man »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #26
woeirua wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the recurrence rate after 1 year here is still quite high. Good progress, but not a cure yet.

Do cancers have a tendency to come back with better drug resistance if it's not fully eliminated? at least a resistance to the drug that got rid of it the previous time?

The same logic applies to cancer cells that you seen in antibiotic resistance. The treatment kills the cancer cells on which it's most effective, leaving the most resistant. When it comes back, they're all going to be resistant.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#144

Post by jijijijij »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #26
woeirua wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the recurrence rate after 1 year here is still quite high. Good progress, but not a cure yet.

Do cancers have a tendency to come back with better drug resistance if it's not fully eliminated? at least a resistance to the drug that got rid of it the previous time?

I think a cancer’s treatment resistance means losing differentiating marks and becoming more and more like a stem cell.

With these evolutionary processes it’s a given, the surviving mutation was already present at the time of treatment. The higher the genetic diversity the higher the chance of said mutations. A cancer’s genome is often highly unstable, since apoptosis is disabled, so diversity tends to be high.

Metastases usually imply a good chunk of "god mode" features gained already, for solid tissue cancers (soft tissue cancers are a bit different), so it’s a bad starting point. Imaging cannot detect any tumor below say 2mm, so ultimately you never know the true stage or treatment success. So a cancer doesn’t "return", it grows above the clinical threshold again.

Treatment is kinda a genetic tautology: If it works you didn’t had a treatment resistant cancer, if not you did. Or: If you lose, you never had a chance.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#145

Post by beowulfey »

MisterMower wrote: post #141
beowulfey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your comments. The ROI is not positive because there is no guarantee basic science will lead to any money-making outcome. That's not how basic science works and it is never how it worked, but basic science is absolutely crucial for advancing tech. If you can convince shareholders that it is e.g. worth investigating unusual crystal structures with no intended product in mind then people will gladly share so…

On the frontiers of knowledge, people furthest out know what problems need to be worked on and what research needs to be done. You don’t need the government blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping that one of them hits a bullseye and calling it “basic science”. I’m open to the idea that government can play a role here, but only in a very small way. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on resea…

Look, I'm going to be honest -- your comment here tells me you have very little knowledge of how scientific funding, or even the scientific process in general, actually works. Would you like information on what is actually going on? I'd be happy to explain it.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#146

Post by beowulfey »

yieldcrv wrote: post #118
beowulfey wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you even mean by this. Are you suggesting the rest of the world, with no centralized government or single budget, could grow to match what the USA previously had because it worked in the USA?

alongside privately held wealth including in non profits and foundations, yes, absolutely privately held wealth far eclipses other metrics like gdp

This is a silly argument. That wealth is already there. If the people with privately held wealth wanted to support research at the level that it is at now, then they could already do so. The fact that they do not does not lead me to think they would once USA funding gets terminated.

As I understand it, you are arguing that if the system was inherently good, then others would try to replicate it. I would then counter with if we had a good system, why should it be destroyed?

We have been able to reach enormous heights thanks to government funding, and no other system could have replicated that success. In every scenario where government funding is eliminated, the level of research progress goes down. As long as you understand that, then you can stand by your statements, but do not fool yourself into thinking we will continue making as much research progress as we have been for the last several decades.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#147

Post by southernplaces7 »

michtzik wrote: post #122
southernplaces7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delivery system would have been mostly irrelevant if they'd gotten the bomb on time. Having even one functional nuke at any time at all before or just shortly after June 6th 1944 and dropping it on London or even around the Normandy beachhead (well within German reach even in 1944) would have pretty much killed the D-Day landings stone dead immediately, and that was something they certainly plausibly could have d…

B-29s dropped the atomic bombs. The B-29 project was also more expensive than the Manhattan project: > The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $52 billion in 2024), far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project, made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress

Sure, because the United States wanted a truly powerful long-range bomber that could fly at extreme altitude with a pressurized, climate-controlled cabin such as its liberators and B-17s didn't have. They wanted this for initially bombing Japan, since the B-29 was developed before the US navy had conquered islands close enough for easy access with older bombers to the home islands.

But, none of this as necessary for delivery of the bomb, especially if we're talking about Nazi Germany, which could have (had it developed the bomb) used any one of its Dornier, Heinkel or Messershcmitt bombers to do the same. Given the size and weight of the two American atomic bombs, the Germans probably could have even used their medium bombers like a modified Heinkel 111, had they already developed their own atomic bomb with a size similar to Little Boy.

You're perhaps confusing useful co-developments with need.

Also worth noting, had Germany invested resources well -instead of frittering them away under Hitler's often incoherent leadership penchant for forcing through personal whimsies and irrational strategic desires- it could have redirected the whopping 160 billion in 2024 dollars that it spent on the largely worthless Atlantic Wall into all kinds of powerful projects.

There's a figure that dwarfs both the Manhattan Project and the B-29 combined. The Nazis could have invested in atomic development while still developing their strategically inert but technically marvellous V Weapons with that kind of money, which they spent anyhow on concrete nonsense.

It's sort of ironic too, since Hitler directly benefitted from the Maginot Line being useless, then went ahead and built his own colossal version of the same foolishness against invasion.

Also, the Germans developed a very useful surface-to-air missile during the war. It was called the wasserfall, and genuinely had promise for severely damaging the allied bombing effort, but no, Hitler was fixated on his giant, immediately worthless V rocket, and wasserfall was neglected then cancelled, the technology applied to the much more difficult V2.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#148

Post by MisterMower »

beowulfey wrote: post #145
MisterMower wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the frontiers of knowledge, people furthest out know what problems need to be worked on and what research needs to be done. You don’t need the government blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping that one of them hits a bullseye and calling it “basic science”. I’m open to the idea that government can play a role here, but only in a very small way. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on resea…

Look, I'm going to be honest -- your comment here tells me you have very little knowledge of how scientific funding, or even the scientific process in general, actually works. Would you like information on what is actually going on? I'd be happy to explain it.

By all means, explain away.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#149

Post by tolmasky »

tomhow wrote: post #137
tolmasky wrote: post #117

[flagged]

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah, I know the rules. But I also know they were written before our current reality. More important rules seem to be being rewritten in front our eyes, so you never know. Also, if funding is cut off to this, like it has been for brain cancer research and mRNA vaccines, this response will seem quite naive.

Re: New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

#150

Post by codr7 »

tptacek wrote: post #62
codr7 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we wanted patients to survive long term, then maybe we could try a treatment that doesn't destroy their immune system in the process.

Invent it and your grandchildren will retire rich.

There is no profit in curing anything, which is a big part o the shit we're in.

Treating it as the parasitic fungus it is would be a step in the right direction.

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