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The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

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Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#141

Post by fc417fc802 »

nxobject wrote: post #119
hdgvhicv wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National governments maybe. Local ones aren’t, and it’s those that fill with nimbys and maintain the majority of control over planning

Everyone wants the datacenter somewhere in their country for sovereignty... just not next to them. Quelle surprise. At this point you may as well build supermarkets on top of them just to sell 'em to people.

They're so absurdly capital intensive at this point that they probably ought to be buried at least 50 meters down. If any reasonably capable countries ever face off directly they'll probably be one of the first things to go.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#142

Post by fc417fc802 »

saulpw wrote: post #65
pixl97 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidently the construct of the devil does because humanity can help but setup complex situations that require a balanced approach rather than only looking at things one way.

In that case, you can explain the nuance and offer a more balanced viewpoint, without invoking the devil as an accountability sink. Your words should stand on their own merits. (To be fair, you did this! I'm just saying you shouldn't preface your words with a trite phrase that signals you'll be lobbing cheap logic over the wall and disavowing responsibility for your words if the logic proves faulty.)

That isn't what devil's advocate means. Merely that you don't personally endorse the position you're presenting but are doing so nonetheless for whatever reason.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#143

Post by sampullman »

Aurornis wrote: post #124
observationist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we let doctors do medicine instead of letting profiteering beancounters optimize for number go up.

Step therapy is required in countries with universal healthcare, too. It can actually be harder to get access to new therapies in countries with universal healthcare because they’re more uniform and strict in what they allow. For a relatable example: The UK just raised the age of eligibility for COVID vaccines all the way up to 75 years old: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health/covid-russian-roulette-... Contrast thi…

It can be harder, but it's specific to the country/system. Here it Taiwan you can walk into any clinic with stock and get a (NHI covered) vaccine any time.

There are other things to complain about of course, but the rules for what's covered ate generally logical. Non-covered medication is affordable to, which helps.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#144

Post by greygoo222 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #86
joenot443 wrote: post #31

I'm glad this is getting more attention! I posted the original reporting from The Australian yesterday - it's a good primer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47379740 https://archive.is/pvRaG

99% sure it's BS though. How can anyone believe that a guy could use a text-generating AI to design a novel cancer treatment , but not write some compliance document ? Come on!

The LLM didn't oneshot the mRNA treatment, it merely suggested the idea. Most of the steps in the process were done with specialized tools. And no novel treatments were invented wholesale, it's more applying a documented process with existing open-source tools that's just too personalized and expensive to be offered by any vet.

I find this story perfectly plausible.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#145

Post by greygoo222 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #84

I too, like everyone one else, often hate the tedious and often absurd, effort that bureaucratic procedures sometimes require, but this story doesn't make any sense to me. We're talking about a guy who's used AI to make personalized ground-breaking medicine for his dog but says he spent three months typing a 100-pages long document for the red tape . In reality, current AI technology isn't particularly designed to he…

It's not a radical medical breakthrough, it's applying a technique already documented in the literature and years into human clinical trials. The LLM is just doing literature summary and planning. The most notable AI innovations here are in protein folding and binder prediction.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#146

Post by greygoo222 »

notahacker wrote: post #136
littlestymaar wrote: post #84

I too, like everyone one else, often hate the tedious and often absurd, effort that bureaucratic procedures sometimes require, but this story doesn't make any sense to me. We're talking about a guy who's used AI to make personalized ground-breaking medicine for his dog but says he spent three months typing a 100-pages long document for the red tape . In reality, current AI technology isn't particularly designed to he…

Yeah. It's possible to think that there are cases where lowering the cost of first phase trials or making it relatively simple for people capable of offering informed consent to obtain access to existing safe medications currently undergoing trials for their specific ailments and thinking that a person who claims to have "designed an RNA vaccine" by asking an LLM to teach him about RNA and now wants to inject it into…

The LLM did not design the drug. The LLM summarized some papers on how to design similar drugs, and then a dozen specialized tools were used in an established pipeline to design the drug. You people need to read the article and read the background before writing nonsense based on your assumptions.

Here's a previous comment of mine talking about personalized mRNA vaccines with useful citations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47210284

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#147

Post by terminalshort »

autoexec wrote: post #129
terminalshort wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do let them do that if you are willing to pay them for it. The fact is that if you "let doctors do medicine" without any cost benefit analysis, then you really aren't going to like the cost.

You mean we do let them do that unless you aren't able to pay them for it. If you're the minority that has very large sums of money your doctors can decide what treatment works best, but for everyone else their healthcare is dictated by some company whose only concern is increasing the amount of profit they rake in and they'd happily see you dead if it would improve their bottom line.

Your comment contains nothing of value. If you have a better way to allocate scarce resources please state it.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#148

Post by pie_flavor »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #126
terminalshort wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What blood is the regulation that doctors can't see patients in other states written in?

There's no specific regulation that doctors can't see patients in other states. Each state simply operates their own medical licensing system. You could imagine a system that works differently, but getting there would require creating new rules and resolving new conflicts, not just removing some rule that exists today. For example, there's a certain category of hot-button procedures that California believes are medic…

You have described every single regulatory problem anyone has ever complained about in the FDA: the default state is denial, and positive action is needed to carve permitted things out of it. If this is a categorical exemption to 'the regulations are written in blood', then you're failing to describe anything identifiable about the regulations at all.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#149

Post by rf15 »

clcaev wrote: post #115
observationist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we let doctors do medicine instead of letting profiteering beancounters optimize for number go up.

I can see why some things landed here. Medicine is expensive. Desperate people are more susceptible to fraud. Yet things are improving: someone like me would be long dead a generation ago. We should look at these challenges holistically and think about better fiscal/social engineering of our marketplaces. Alvin Roth's book, "Who Gets What and Why", is a good introduction to identifying market failures and thinking ab…

> Medicine is expensive.

The whole point is that, past a certain point, it really isn't.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#150

Post by renewiltord »

observationist wrote: post #109
clcaev wrote: post #107

For those of modest means there is also the "fail first" insurance process where you need to use less expensive therapies before a more appropriate therapy is approved. Each failure can be costly to a patient's health, often exacting irreversible comorbidities, not even considering lost work, family wellbeing, and pain/suffering. For those with rare diseases, insurance also doesn't help with "N of 1" efforts. A case…

Imagine if we let doctors do medicine instead of letting profiteering beancounters optimize for number go up.

We do. They just can’t charge it to a third party to the relationship. As a doctor you are welcome to provide services at cost.
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