How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives • Hacker News Board

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#51

Post by RA_Fisher » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

syn0byte wrote: post #42

hopler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is that without regulation you get $5 life-saving shampoo hacks, but you also get lots of shake oil that is useless or harmful.

And with regulation you get...lots of snake oil this is useless to harmful. Prozac, Phenfen, etc. Even device and equipment makers like Theranos. You also get Pharma-Bro types selling medication WHO considers "essential" for 750 dollars a pill. Only the one company has(had) the regulatory approval to make a drug so basic Aussie school kids can make in chem class[0]. [0] https://qz.com/851416/why-martin-shkreli-and-tu…

Yep, or extra deaths like Vioxx: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779871/

Or, take high insulin prices caused by a government-granted oligopoly from the FDA. The FDA maintains high barriers to entry. We all suffer from artificially high prices and reduced access.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#52

Post by known » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

The Economist article is paywalled for me, but BBC news has a piece at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40498395 that describes the shampoo bottle hack.

Install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/burlesco/

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#53

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

lultimouomo wrote: post #35

It's not clear to me if he invented a new device, or simply built a 2$ home made version of a 6000$ standard bubble-CPAP. In other word, is this a story about ingenuity saving lives, or about regulation and industry profiting on medical devices killing lives? (Note that I'm not saying that we necessarily have too much regulation or that medical industry profits too much; I'm just saying that in this specific case the…

I think the real story is that there is clearly a market need for a simpler and cheaper (if less effective) bubble CPAP, which will save many lives in countries that can't afford the $6K version. It wouldn't be used here in the US but it'd do a lot of good in Bangladesh.

I don't think it's a story of over-regulation, as I doubt Bangladesh has regulations in place only allowing the $6K version.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#54

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

infinityplus1 wrote: post #33

ekianjo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad > jugaad ~ hack Welcome to Jugaad-er News.

Well, a person who creates the jugaads is called "jugaadi". So, Jugaadi News.

I would definitely read that blog!

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#55

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

sparkzilla wrote: post #49

ignoramous wrote: post #29

Outlined: https://outline.com/Yb8sLG

Didn't News Genius run into trouble by copying articles for annotation like this? https://glog.glennf.com/blog/2016/3/25/citation-appropriatio...

For sure they're going to go down in flames at some point. Enjoy the free mirrors while they still work though.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#56

Post by saghul » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #10

What a nice story about keeping things simple. Also, damn, neonatology must be brutal to work in at times.

My mom worked in the neonatology ICU for years, and while every once in a while there was a tragedy which made her very upset, not many bad (and unexpected) things happen these says. It's a very rewarding job, as you help start a life.

Alas this can only be said about the first world. In less developed parts of our world this would be the complete opposite I imagine.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#57

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

chrismeller wrote: post #34

xyzzy123 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you deserve to be downvoted for this. A $5 hack is not really possible in the west, and that is definitely a thing worth thinking about. You might not get stopped from doing it if it was immediately obvious that it was effective but eventually hundreds of thousands if not millions would be spent on studies or approvals before a “proper” device made its way into the supply chain at 10000x markup over inj…

Also, is it really worth it to a doctor in the US? Even if I _know_ for a fact that it would work 100% absolutely the same as the multi-million dollar device, that's not the accepted procedure. I could still do it and save thousands of lives, but as soon as _anything_ goes wrong there's going to be a lawsuit and the fact that I used this crappy looking $5 thing is going to be a huge part of it, even if it had absolut…

This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway.

It's a good thing there's regulations in place here preventing the use of less effective hacks when better devices exist. And yeah, it's not just regulation but also legal liability that comes into play here; in the long run it's more expensive to use cheap hacks and risk many-million-dollar lawsuits if they kill someone than to pony up the thousands of dollars for the correct equipment.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#58

Post by TheCoelacanth » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #3

>>The hospital now deploys it routinely and the number of children who die there from pneumonia has fallen by three-quarters. That means the survival rate in the Dhaka Hospital is today almost on a par with that of children treated in rich-world facilities, using conventional ventilators. Innovation like this is facilitated by the lack of medical device regulations in Bangladesh.

More likely it is facilitated by the cheapness of labor in Bangladesh. Bubble CPAP takes a lot of work to get set up correctly. In rich countries, it's not worth it to use a cheaper device if it takes more labor to get it to work. In Bangladesh, where labor is a tenth of the price, it is worth it.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#59

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #47

jacobush wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They way English rifles through the pockets of other languages looking for vocabulary, just start using it and see if it sticks. :)

Many languages do this as far as I can tell. I speak Indonesian and my girlfriend speaks Hindi, we come across words the languages share every so often. I’ll also catch a word in Tagalog or Dutch that I understand in Indonesian from time to time too.

My partner is Hungarian and her language and mine (I'm English) share very few words, it's strange with most languages I hear from other Europeans I can at least get one or two words fairly often but Hungarian is just straight Klingon.

It's an interesting hidtory, it basically shares no (known) common roots like most languages around Europe do.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#60

Post by stupidbird » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

lultimouomo wrote: post #35

It's not clear to me if he invented a new device, or simply built a 2$ home made version of a 6000$ standard bubble-CPAP. In other word, is this a story about ingenuity saving lives, or about regulation and industry profiting on medical devices killing lives? (Note that I'm not saying that we necessarily have too much regulation or that medical industry profits too much; I'm just saying that in this specific case the…

I'd say it's about the value of low-cost alternatives from an industry (medical devices) that very often disregards cost entirely.

I understand the precision and expertise that goes into medical devices, and they've saved millions of lives (mine included) — but in countries where $6,000 means something might as well not exist, they need something in-between precision manufacturing or nothing at all.