Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials • Hacker News Board

Re: Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials

#41

Post by trasz » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

rf15 wrote: post #12

newsbinator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely it would be shocking if most things that work on mice worked in the same ways on humans.

what are you thinking of specifically? I mean genetically and functionally we are incredibly similar as mammals. Most poisons/etc. work the same for example.

Out of curiosity, is that property specific to mice, or are most small mammals similar in that regard, and we use mice instead of, say, cats, just because they are more convenient?

Re: Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials

#42

Post by enturn » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

maxander wrote: post #4

jobigoud wrote: post #2

Is there speculation on what this would do to a healthy brain?

Probably more harm than good- you probably don’t want ultrasonic waves shaking your neurons around without a good reason. This sounds like a “kick a TV and it works again” sort of technology.

The first thing that came to my mind was how some people with kidney stones are treated with shock waves that breaks them up.

Re: Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials

#43

Post by emiliobumachar » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 1:02 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #39

emiliobumachar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many treatments of severe conditions do substantial harm, which is considered acceptable for the benefits. Extreme examples are chemotherapy, i.e. giving poison to cancer patients, and radiotherapy, i.e. irradiating them. The healthy cells can take it, the cancer cells not so much. Statistically.

Yeah but this isn't chemotherapy, and with chemotherapy you are literally trying to kill cells.

A distinction without a difference. What I meant was: it may be worth it to cause some neural damage to defuse whatever mechanism causes a disease that, when unstopped, causes more neural damage. Hence "kick the TV" technologies are not out of consideration.

Obviously, very big ethical issues arise when experimenting on people, but that's nothing new. Someone took radiotherapy first, before anyone was sure it was worth it to the individual.