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Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

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Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#41

Post by mrschwabe »

VikingCoder wrote: post #35
mrschwabe wrote: post #23

Apparently your internet browsing data is not enough, Google also wants your medical records and DNA. Seriously though, I wouldn't trust any company connected with Google for 'health and well being'. Their total disregard for privacy would imply they are not working in my best interest for health either.

"Their total disregard for privacy" To the contrary, they have utter regard for your privacy. They advocate for governments to have more respect for your privacy, as well. Alfred knows everything about Bruce Wayne. Google is Alfred, except he doesn't even take a salary - he wants to show you advertising that you would think is high quality, and he promises to never sell your personal information to the advertisers. P…

Oh yeah, then why didn't they shut-down Gmail like the folks at Lavabit did? Instead of doing the right thing, Google let themselves become compromised in secret - only for us to find out after someone was willing to put their life on the line to leak this information.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#42

Post by dougbarrett »

mrschwabe wrote: post #23

Apparently your internet browsing data is not enough, Google also wants your medical records and DNA. Seriously though, I wouldn't trust any company connected with Google for 'health and well being'. Their total disregard for privacy would imply they are not working in my best interest for health either.

They're just looking for customers to stick around longer. It's a morbid reality, but if death could be prolonged so they could find new ways to advertise and find new products for the elderly that have prolonged their life, then that would make sense. They could potentially be creating a whole new market.

It could take 20-30 years for their research and development to catch on, but I'd imagine some of Google's biggest followers/clients are in their 20's, 30's, 40's.

They wouldn't have launched this company if there was no "end-game" or no ultimate goal, and retaining customers indefinitely seems like the ultimate goal for any company.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#43

Post by psbp »

mrschwabe wrote: post #36
psbp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone read the article? This seems to be a biomedical company focused on engineering solutions to aging/illness. It's seemingly not Google Health 2.0.

Sure, but if their plans involve bringing said solutions to the masses - this skepticism applies. Just imagine the millions of hipsters lining up for the Google, er, Calico vaccination.

Google has a history of opening up its research. I doubt the medical community would accept a "google" vaccine without overwhelming consensus.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#44

Post by jonknee »

ianstallings wrote: post #20

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords. But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs I fear a future where "all…

> But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me.

How else would they do it?

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#45

Post by ginko »

jerf wrote: post #38
ianstallings wrote: post #20

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords. But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs I fear a future where "all…

Like with anything else, the question isn't whether the rich will be able to afford it, the question is how much progress can we make in making it cheap, how quickly, to get it to how many people? It is a moral imperative to make sure that short-sighted class warfare does not cut off the nose to spite the face by destroying this work under the guise of egalitarianism, because we can not turn on a dime and immediately…

But what about generation warfare?

Imagine having to live in a world where all the positions of power are permanently occupied by people from the generation of your great-grandparents.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#46

Post by crassus »

This is a great first step. But realistically they can only move so fast with FDA regulation increasing your iteration cycle time on therapies to 10 years. Our biomedical regulatory regime is extremely risk averse.

If we had a regime where anyone could voluntarily place any therapy into their own body, we'd move a lot faster. Yes, a few more people would die in testing. But a lot more lives would be saved by the therapies produced.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#47

Post by throwaway172 »

melling wrote: post #24
throwaway172 wrote: post #11

To what extent is this guided by the self-interest of aging tech darling CEOs (Larry Page must be in his 40s by now)? As a young person I tend to think "some of these health issues ought to be solved problems by the time I'm older." But I don't have the kind of capital to spend on it that companies like Google, or persons like Larry Page, do. Regardless of motivation, I'm happy to see investment in this domain.

How many diseases have we cured in the past 20 years? The past 40 years? Medical advances are really, really slow. As for the "self-interest" question (that's why you created a throw away account?), I'm sure as you get a little older, and you notice people dying who are close to your age, you might be wish that people took an interest in being self-serving a couple decades earlier. Steve Jobs, for example, had billio…

For example, polio was cured less than 60 years ago. We know much more about the effects of radiation (sunscreen, anyone?) than we did 40 years ago. Genome sequencing is becoming slightly more affordable (than even 10 years ago) due to tech advances; we can predict hereditary disease in some instances (BRCA mutations, etc).

Steve Jobs is actually a terrible example. To quote wikipedia, "Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months,[170] instead consuming a psuedo-medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease." Pseudo is Greek for "false." And if you want cancer solved by the time you get it, you probably have to pony up the money before your diagnosis.

I'm not disagreeing that medical advances are relatively slow, but on the scale of human life, Page has probably at least another 40 years of advances left to see. And that's a lot.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#49

Post by netcan »

ianstallings wrote: post #20

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords. But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs I fear a future where "all…

The technology tidal wave we've been riding is going to take us to strange and probably unexpected places if we stay on long enough. What it is going to do to distribution of wealth, is anyone's guess.

On the labour/production side a technology seems to be creating wider income gaps. For the winners it is a lever with which to create more wealth. For others, they are competing with machines and poor countries (enabled by technology to work with rich ones) for work.

On the product consumption side, the gap is pretty small. The cheap netbook that almost anyone in Europe or the US can afford is not much different (in price or performance) from the one used by a billionaire. No matter how rich you are, you can't get a better smartphone than the models you can see in any bus. Even the low end (50-$100) smartphones are getting decent. I expect smartphones to be as ubiquitous as dumb ones soon, that means the gap between rich British & bangladeshi (measured in smartphone wealth) is plummeting.

Who knows what future waves of technology will look like, especially medical technology.

I think the appropriate response is keep an open mind and see where stuff takes us. Don't bind your thinking to past paradigms. Go read the Communist Manifesto. Realize how it is a product of its time, the industrial revolution. It takes a lot of contortion to try understanding the world by that paradigm. For Adam Smith, technological efficiency was about making pins.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#50

Post by VikingCoder »

mrschwabe wrote: post #41
VikingCoder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their total disregard for privacy" To the contrary, they have utter regard for your privacy. They advocate for governments to have more respect for your privacy, as well. Alfred knows everything about Bruce Wayne. Google is Alfred, except he doesn't even take a salary - he wants to show you advertising that you would think is high quality, and he promises to never sell your personal information to the advertisers. P…

Oh yeah, then why didn't they shut-down Gmail like the folks at Lavabit did? Instead of doing the right thing, Google let themselves become compromised in secret - only for us to find out after someone was willing to put their life on the line to leak this information.

I will never be able to convince you that Google was not complicit in the acts the government took that Edward Snowden has exposed, and you will never convince me they were complicit.

There is literally no evidence anyone could provide you, that would make you change your opinion.

And I can't claim that I'm much different, if I'm honest, unless Google execs admit to it. Or unless journalists discover examples of prosecutors admitting evidence in some court, to convict someone, based on data that could only have been acquired with Google being complicit.

You seem to forget that Google pulled out of China, rather than comply. How much money did they leave on the table, there?

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