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Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

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Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#41

Post by dekhn »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #28

The linked post about his treatment is basically a vanity article; low in useful information, but high in vague assertions and platitudes. There's also a link to a post griping about the red tape someone experienced while trying to self-treat their dog's cancer that's weird. I clearly live in a different world than these people.

This is a common trope in the tech field- successful tech person who is good at tech gets disease and wants to help cure it. It's easy to generate a lot of data these days (whole genome sequencing, various tests) but the reality is that turning that data into actionable knowledge is remarkably difficult.

Much of the red tape exists to help people avoid making common mistakes that aren't obvious until you've been through the process a number of times (other red tape just exists to gatekeep unnecessarily).

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#42

Post by amazingamazing »

perch56 wrote: post #35
amazingamazing wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be talking to AI

This AI recommends you visualize inequality at scale and see the difference between 1B vs 300B. https://youtu.be/c7sr46hxVM4

The percentile ranking increase is greater between median human and 1B compared to 1B and 300B. Bad AI

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#43

Post by pavas »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
dsign wrote: post #29

When it comes to cancer, there is an awful lot of legacy thinking and "way things are done" taking lives. Starting with the so called "standard of care", which makes patient lose precious treatment windows while they wait for a possible miracle from "first-line drugs" from thirty and forty years ago which frankly are not that good. But it's hard to reform because the fraction of people who ever think about cancer as…

I'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first attacks are very crude and have broad systemic si…

> I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field.

I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#44

Post by dudul »

perch56 wrote: post #12
twostorytower wrote: post #3

Really awesome that he was able to do this and give back, but none of this would have been possible without his unfathomable wealth and access.

According to some online sources his total wealth is under $3B. Hardly ‘unfathomable wealth’ IMO. Sure, billionaire territory but nowhere near the ultra-wealthy.

This comment left me speechless... There are just a bit over 3000 billionaires in the world, 900 in the USA. If $3B isn't "unfathomable wealth" I don't know what is.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#45

Post by testaccount28 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
dsign wrote: post #29

When it comes to cancer, there is an awful lot of legacy thinking and "way things are done" taking lives. Starting with the so called "standard of care", which makes patient lose precious treatment windows while they wait for a possible miracle from "first-line drugs" from thirty and forty years ago which frankly are not that good. But it's hard to reform because the fraction of people who ever think about cancer as…

I'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first attacks are very crude and have broad systemic si…

i'm pretty much a pessimest [sic] when it comes to fighting smallpox. i think it just exploits one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#46

Post by parsimo2010 »

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research?

Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew he had cancer further reinforcing that he's not purely self-interested)

I'm a little melancholy that my aunt, who was a millionaire just not a mega-millionaire, didn't have the resources to do this before she died of cancer. She was able to pay for a high standard of care, but couldn't single-handedly fund teams of scientists to work on her case. I know she would have done so if she could, her biggest regret was not being around longer to see her grandkids grow up and she was very driven to watch over her family.

It is a little sad that the world's medical research apparatuses couldn't seem to fund this on their own. Not just the US medical system, but Europe and China also don't have better treatments until a rich guy came along. It seems that it's not for a lack of ideas, just that some of these ideas couldn't be funded. Is it that this type of bone cancer is super rare and the cost just isn't worth it? Or are we just under-funding at the level that several ideas with a likely positive ROI aren't able to get funded?

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#47

Post by croes »

rvz wrote: post #39
croes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is mostly based on either luck and more often heritage.

Not only Sid didn't come from any of those backgrounds, neither did the founder of Freshworks who literally started his company based on reading a hacker news comment. [0] So I only see more excuses here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815

So it was luck

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#48

Post by melling »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #46

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew…

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research?

The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#49

Post by NitpickLawyer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
dsign wrote: post #29

When it comes to cancer, there is an awful lot of legacy thinking and "way things are done" taking lives. Starting with the so called "standard of care", which makes patient lose precious treatment windows while they wait for a possible miracle from "first-line drugs" from thirty and forty years ago which frankly are not that good. But it's hard to reform because the fraction of people who ever think about cancer as…

I'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first attacks are very crude and have broad systemic si…

> seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease.

I think that's what the poster above you was saying. "Oldschool" chemo is basically poison, and the hope is that it kills off the cancer before the patient. But there are newer drugs that are extremely effective with way way way less side effects out there, depending on which type of cancer one has. Things like immunotherapy are really effective if you happen to match their targeted types of cancer, and some have basically 0 side effects, leading to a QoL improvement if they happen to work. People have gotten nobel prizes for some of these discoveries, it's really insane how far we've come in the last 30-40 years.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#50

Post by declan_roberts »

melling wrote: post #48
parsimo2010 wrote: post #46

(slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so they are incentivized to fund medical research? Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded a cancer treatment company years before he knew…

Why can’t we just ask our governments to spend more on research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on cancer research? The US government and European governments could find that amount of money every year.

The United States and world spend huge amounts of money on this, not even to mention the enormous amounts of private research.

The takeaway here is getting money into the hands of smarter and more motivated people.

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