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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

#251

My father is currently dying of malignant melanoma with brain metastasis... I wish this treatment was available a few years ago.

My dad died 30 years ago after it spread to his liver. He was in the study at duke for what is today the standard treatment line for immunotherapy. I hope he was able to help. He died 9 months after his diagnosis.

Enjoy the time you have with him now and be grateful for all the years you've had. Nothing is going to make the loss of a parent "OK" and it will hurt no matter if you see it coming like you are or it's a surprise.

Remember to breathe.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally someone said it! This is exactly why we need to be REMOVING VIAGRA FROM THE MARKET! There were NO longitudinal studies! NOTHING looked at psychological effects! REMOVE VIAGRA TODAY!

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#253
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question for you: what is the goal of these comments? What is it would you like people to do or think differently after reading what you've written? I'll go first: my hope is that someone who has read what I've written will be more likely to take seriously something suspicious they see on their skin rather than ignore it as unimportant, and be more inclined to take seriously protection from sun exposure when possible

My goal is to 1) not reward these companies by over inflating phase 3 clinical trial outcomes and 2) to not fear a skin cancer diagnosis and 3) not live your life in a bubble while polluting the world with sunscreen. Sun exposure does not cause skin cancer. It only increases the risk of skin cancer in some people. Look at the ROI on people's behavior and it makes no sense. Are we actually causing more damage by using…

There are truths in there, but you seem to be looking only for evidence that supports your beliefs (and misreading evidence against your beliefs) instead of tailoring your beliefs based on evidence. Additionally you make blanket, definitive assertions like "sun exposure does not cause skin cancer" which no one should be listening to

Multiple things can be true at the same time:

1. Skin cancer can be successfully treated if found and removed early

2. Vitamin D is healthy and necessary, but at the same time too much sun exposure is harmful. That harm depends on different factors (like skin tone)

3. Some kinds of sunscreen might be problematic or bad for the environment, but there are different kinds of sunscreen (mineral-based, reef-safe)

4. There are multiple ways to mitigate sun exposure, not just sunscreen (avoid peak UV times, wear sun-protective clothing). Mitigation doesn't mean "complete avoidance"

5. Sun exposure is not the only cause of skin cancer, but it is a cause of skin cancer and a common one at that

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

#254

This appears to be a potentially huge win for health. The market has Moderna up 153% at time of writing, which is some sort of validation I suppose. Related stories: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/merck-and-modernas-per... https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/merck-moderna-say-m... https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succ...

For a while (like a year+ ago), the shares were trading around cash value. But they were burning through cash. Happy it’s worked out for them!

Many people, including myself, often take pot-shots at "big pharma." But, this just seems like a win-win, for the org and humanity. They believed in their tech, rode it out, and we all came out the better for it.

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

#255
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I think you’re looking at this wrong. They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside. They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up. There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed w…

The idea that humans were basically retarded prior to about 1901 is a little hubristic

They were no dumber then than in 2026, but they fundamentally had much less access to information. How much do you trust the medical advice of an uneducated person in 2026?

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mak…

No there actually is in general and it's the same exact way in which there's generally good guidance for medicating your children: they're called evidence-backed guidelines.

The contexts in which drugs make sense is captured by the clinical guidelines.

And sure, it is arguably questionable whether there was ever a net benefit to an average young kid to get a COVID vaccine. However that is a distinct claim from "it never made sense to give kids COVID vaccines." There was certainly a point in time in which a logical interpretation of the information available at the time indicated that kids should get vaccinated. The risks were (correctly) understood to be near-zero and the benefits were (arguably incorrectly) understood to be significant.

Someone who, in early 2021, decided against vaccinating their children was making a decision that was not indicated by the best-available information at that time.

Someone who bets on Red doesn't get to claim they were "correct" in betting on Red even if Red comes up, and certainly not if Green comes up (arguably neutral outcome).

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side r…

> Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist. the comment you are replying to is HedonicEscal8r's first comment in this comment chain. > that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on no... it is correct…

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

#258
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please be careful and charitable in reading others' words, especially as they relate to scientific topics. OP did not say that melanoma has no sun exposure risk but that it is lower than the risks associated with other cutaneous cancers (e.g., SCC and BCC) and it would seem that's true based on the very short search I performed. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/

The criticism and correction were polite, helpful, and appropriate. The original comment is misleading. Your reply is bizarre, and seems to deliberately misread the original comment, the reply, and the context.

The criticism was both impolite and against HN rules.

The reply was reiterating HN rules, as well as adding data supporting the original statement.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side r…

> Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist. the comment you are replying to is HedonicEscal8r's first comment in this comment chain. > that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on no... it is correct…

pessimizer misattributes a comment to someone who didn't write it. i mention it, get accused of "piling on", and then get downvoted. hn can be so fucking weird.

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

#260
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes every cancer is different, responds to different therapy, and with different survival rates. However, cancer treatment, as a whole, works. Oncologists do not prescribe incredibly intense treatments like chemotherapy out of nowhere. Chemotherapy is often not curative. Instead, it's used to both prolong life and improve quality of life. Dying from late-stage cancer is often painful and miserable. It might be shocki…

They told my father Chemo woudl add six months on his six month estimated lifespan. He died in two months cause the chemo blocked his liver. My sister in law was a chemo nurse and begged him not to get it. He died on loads of morphine. His last words were "It's all a scam!" Sorry, you have no idea. Talk to a chemo nurse.

Huh? How would chemo "block his liver"? Do you mean that he had a liver metastasis that the chemo didn't help with?
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