Live data from Hacker News

Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

mcgill.ca

51–60 of 169 posts

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#51
post #49
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes red tape is good in situations that might affect a large part of the population. Remember the whole Thalidomide situation.

When red tape makes drug development and testing impossible, as it did here, the system has ceased to benefit humanity and is causing nothing but stagnation and long-term suffering (by virtue of holding back potentially life-improving or life-saving treatments.) Enabling medical progress is far more important in the long term for our species (and to reduce suffering) than adding the umpteenth killswitch/safeguard for…

It is unfortunate that the only way to get through the regulatory process is copious $ - but it does work. If this project were better funded, it would likely have gotten through.

There is an entire political party representing something like half the population of the US dedicated to shrinking the regulatory apparatus, including the FDA. That doesn't sound like career security to me.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#52
post #34

What i don't understand, is why not do animal studies? Like sure that won't answer all questions, but it seems like it would shed some light on if other bacteria cause cavities or not, and if nothing else a basic starting point.

It mentions this in the article but JD Hillman's team did study the s. mutans bacteria in rats. The results of that research were that the rats dosed with BCS3-L1 did experience fewer dental carries.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#53
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your heart's in the right place, but these videos are hard to watch.

Which one? I was looking forward to some awkwardness but all I can find are tutorials on teeth hygiene.

Dunno that it's awkwardness so much as the discomfort of watching someone with pretty messed up teeth forcing too-large ID brushes in between them

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#54
post #47

Wow, the FDA is worse than useless. So much regulatory red tape. These guys had every single reasonable safeguard in place and the FDA kept putting requirement on top of requirement until literally no one would qualify for the study. 20-30 years later and humanity has had precisely zero benefit because of the FDA's simply absurd, technically impossible level of overcaution in this scenario. It is incredible how much…

Why is all of humanity gated by the FDA? The FDA doesn't regulate every jurisdiction on the planet.

Go take it to some other country if the FDA is the problem.

Why didn't that happen here for many decades?

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#55
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one? I was looking forward to some awkwardness but all I can find are tutorials on teeth hygiene.

Dunno that it's awkwardness so much as the discomfort of watching someone with pretty messed up teeth forcing too-large ID brushes in between them

This exactly. I don't think the average person is as comfortable as a medical professional at starting at videos/images of messed up teeth, injuries, disease, etc. It's not exactly what we want to stare at when learning.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#56
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your evidence or rationale for the oil routine? Serious question, not trolling

Thousands of years of test of time stood with ayurveda. also validated with citations as experiments catch up https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5654187/

>The process of oil swishing is believed to cure or control 30 different types of systemic diseases including headaches, migraine, and chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes mellitus.

Oh come on.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#57
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th article just confirms my suspicion that the worst thing is I could be out $500

How is that your takeaway? Either you didn’t read the article, or you’re blatantly ignoring that we don’t understand the long term implications of having this bacteria in your mouth and gut microbiome. There may be no problems at all… but we don’t know. This is why FDA regulations exist. The product being sold in Prospera to skirt regulations should be a red flag anyway. I’m not saying that it can’t or won’t work. I’…

Sometimes you read an article and you think "this article doesn't want me to do X, but all its arguments against X are utterly terrible. If that's the best they could find, X is probably alright."

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one? I was looking forward to some awkwardness but all I can find are tutorials on teeth hygiene.

Dunno that it's awkwardness so much as the discomfort of watching someone with pretty messed up teeth forcing too-large ID brushes in between them

Thank you all very much for the feedback, it gives me a new perspective on things. We wanted to show a real case, rather than animations, because we thought it would be clearer for our patients; but we are probably desensitized to watching stuff like this. Would you prefer to see a 3D animation instead, or something else?

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#59

It seems like FDA restrictions on clinical trials have really shot us all in the foot by depriving us the opportunity to collect data on this bacteria before it was made available as a supplement. There is clearly a demand for this product and it seems quite likely that Hillman et al could have gotten a cohort together to conduct a trial if they hadn't been faced with such extreme restrictions on testing. Why is info…

Because the participants could very easily spread it to other people. This wouldn’t just affect them. That’s why the trial was ultimately required to take place under quarantine.

It’s not even a question of whether it would spread, but whether it might spread. There’s a reasonable chance that this bacterium would, in fact, spread, and nobody has proven otherwise.

The FDA is doing its job here: it’s protecting the masses from people who believe they’re just consenting for themselves.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#60
> We are thus left with a product, Lumina, that cannot guarantee the prevention of future caries

"Guarantees" are not strictly needed. What matters most is whether there is a substantial reduction of future caries, not whether it makes you totally immune to it.

Say, if Lumina/BCS3-L1 "only" reduces cavities by 50%, it is already half as good (arguably) as a drug which prevented 100%. This would already be large progress for such a massive global problem. The article author does not seem to recognize the potential of such a drug.

Post reply on HN