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YC Bio

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Bio

#61

Post by DoreenMichele »

jacobolus wrote: post #58
DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't have a source. We are seeing a huge rise in problem pregnancies, birth defects, etc. There are likely a number of contributing factors to that reality. It isn't PC to wonder if maybe the rise of female careers is at related. That is viewed as antifeminist and so on. Women routinely take time off work to care for relatives, whether their own children or other relatives. They get no credit for this vital wo…

Of course kids in {daycare, school, the playground, riding the bus, ...} get sick (especially lots of minor viral infections) more often than kids who live in a hermetically sealed bubble, never share toys, and only ever interact with a couple of adults. Adults who never leave home also get sick less often than adults who go to school, work, etc. But it is also the case that the human immune system remembers various…

We have 7 billion people on the planet and in my lifetime we went from more than half of all people living in rural environs to more than half of all people living in cities. Your hostile description of living in a bubble was the default norm for human life until very recently. The aberration here is not people with limited contact to others. The aberration is that in recent decades it is the new norm to work at a job that exposes you to many people every day and attend a public school that exposes you to many people every day.

We do nothing to really account for this being a historical aberration for the species and then wonder why we have antibiotic resistant infections. They get that way in part by running through many, many people and having vastly more chances to evolve.

Re: YC Bio

#62

Post by beatpanda »

How is enabling people to live longer going to address a healthcare crisis that is primarily about the cost of care? If people live longer they are going to end up paying more for care, especially for whatever treatment any of these companies comes up with that enables them to live longer.

Re: YC Bio

#63

Post by xyhopguy »

jforman wrote: post #35
DoreenMichele wrote: post #21

Color me skeptical. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have gotten myself mostly well when that is not supposed to be possible. I was a homemaker for a long time. Eating right and germ control are a very large part of what I do and it isn't rocket science, as they say. I also can see no means to turn it into a business model or income stream, nor even get anyone interested in benefiting from what I know for free. It…

Every disease is a different beast, and biology is very hard to tame. We've thrown probably trillions of dollars at cancer over the past few decades, and only in the past few years, with immuno-oncology, has there been any real hope of progress toward broad cures (there was a heady moment after Gleevec, too, but that turned out to be the exception rather than the rule). There was just a huge wave of Alzheimer's treat…

To be fair though, we are really close with cancer. Like really really close. cfDNA is revolutionary for our measurements. Crispr is revolutionary for understanding. So close.

Re: YC Bio

#64

Post by Fomite »

xyhopguy wrote: post #63
jforman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every disease is a different beast, and biology is very hard to tame. We've thrown probably trillions of dollars at cancer over the past few decades, and only in the past few years, with immuno-oncology, has there been any real hope of progress toward broad cures (there was a heady moment after Gleevec, too, but that turned out to be the exception rather than the rule). There was just a huge wave of Alzheimer's treat…

To be fair though, we are really close with cancer. Like really really close. cfDNA is revolutionary for our measurements. Crispr is revolutionary for understanding. So close.

Note that it appears CRISPR will not be easy to implement in humans, thanks to some pre-existing immunities from frequently colonizing bacteria.

Re: YC Bio

#65

Post by tinokid »

jforman wrote: post #35
DoreenMichele wrote: post #21

Color me skeptical. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have gotten myself mostly well when that is not supposed to be possible. I was a homemaker for a long time. Eating right and germ control are a very large part of what I do and it isn't rocket science, as they say. I also can see no means to turn it into a business model or income stream, nor even get anyone interested in benefiting from what I know for free. It…

Every disease is a different beast, and biology is very hard to tame. We've thrown probably trillions of dollars at cancer over the past few decades, and only in the past few years, with immuno-oncology, has there been any real hope of progress toward broad cures (there was a heady moment after Gleevec, too, but that turned out to be the exception rather than the rule). There was just a huge wave of Alzheimer's treat…

>overall the space is mostly filled with scientists and doctors trying to make people healthier, and mostly failing.

Failing flat, i.e., not making people healthier but not making them sicker either, is not a problem. Failing down, i.e. trying to make people healthier but making them sicker instead, is and has been a huge problem with modern medicine, even when done with the best of intentions.

Yes, the past century has seen great progress in neutralizing infectious disease (though it is likely that the HIV epidemic itself was an "own goal" of basically iatrogenic origin [1]), but nearly everything else, including cancer, is a wash.

Unfortunately, a sober analysis of the benefits and harms of actors in the medical space cannot afford to give much credit for effort or good intentions.

[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/21

Re: YC Bio

#66

Post by kayhi »

unknownkadath wrote: post #60
kayhi wrote: post #34

Awesome! We've been supporting start up bio companies by offering them a fair pricing on equipment, supplies and chemicals. I think we've sold to every YC bio company except Ginkgo (doh!). There's a huge problem in non-transparent pricing for products. For those outside the industry it's like buying used cars, dealing with sales reps and everything is a quote. Researchers are at a huge informational disadvantage when…

Don't forget eBay! If you're willing to do some simple repairs, you can save a ton of money when revving up a new lab.

eBay is decent for used equipment some glassware, but would not recommend it for chemicals.

Re: YC Bio

#67

Post by DoreenMichele »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
DoreenMichele wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, completely orthogonal. So, curing Rickets and Scurvy by identifying the nutritional deficiencies behind them us totally not an advance in medicine. This explains a lot of what is wrong with medicine today. It was different when I was growing up. Doctors would treat all the kids in the family at one time so some infection didn't simply get passed around endlessly. We seem to have stopped doing that, and we wonder…

I meant that in context of your entire comment tree; e.g. things like: > Things that are actually health promoting, like having a full-time parent to care for the kids and primary breadwinner, eating right, exercise etc are boring and don't make VCs rich. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see you implying something like "why do medicine, if we could eat less 'junk food', work less and smile more instead". > curing Ricke…

That's indeed the domain of medicine. Which will tell you, "you need more nutrient $X in your diet" as a solution to the problem, instead of "eat healthier" (for values of 'healthier' determined by current fitness fashion).

That sounds just really arbitrarily personally hostile towards me.

I have gone through multiple blogs in which I have tried to lay out specific nutritional recommendations for people with CF. The few people who have tried it have gotten results.

I have done everything within my own power to try to elucidate specifics no different from the examples of Rickets and Scurvy being caused by nutritional deficiencies. But it does not get taken seriously and I can find no path forward for that, and not due to lack of trying. One woman said she would write a paper with me on the subject, then arbitrarily changed her mind. Her son died of CF. She was a smoker. I don't think she really wants to admit that her smoking helped kill him. She wants to find a pill that makes everything OK and absolves whatever guilt she carries.

The CF community is not interested in what I am doing. So there probably is no path forward here. I fully expect to die in obscurity having never accomplished anything at all with my life.

But this arbitrary validation of nutrition as medicine, unless I am doing it and then it is somehow hokum, is just one of the craziest things I have ever seen on HN.

Re: YC Bio

#68

Post by jacobolus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #61
jacobolus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course kids in {daycare, school, the playground, riding the bus, ...} get sick (especially lots of minor viral infections) more often than kids who live in a hermetically sealed bubble, never share toys, and only ever interact with a couple of adults. Adults who never leave home also get sick less often than adults who go to school, work, etc. But it is also the case that the human immune system remembers various…

We have 7 billion people on the planet and in my lifetime we went from more than half of all people living in rural environs to more than half of all people living in cities. Your hostile description of living in a bubble was the default norm for human life until very recently. The aberration here is not people with limited contact to others. The aberration is that in recent decades it is the new norm to work at a jo…

The “default norm for human life” through most of time was either living in the forest, or living as a peasant on a farm. Peasants living on farms have historically had half of their children die in infancy, and generally poor health and short life spans afterward, because they eat an unbalanced diet mostly consisting of staple starches, spend half their time breathing wood smoke near a hearth fire, do strenuous repetitive manual work their whole lives, etc. People living in the forest were generally healthier, except sometimes they starved, were violently killed, or the like.

Folks living on farms or in the forest generally don’t have autoimmune problems because they have constant exposure to animals, a wide variety of plants, etc. On average (especially the peasants) they have poorer health than folks living in cities, but the distribution of health problems is fairly different between the three groups.

Deadly plagues (viral and bacterial) have ripped through through and decimated agricultural societies relatively often, at least in the past couple millennia. Many crippling diseases have also been endemic in many places (especially tropical regions) as far back as we have records. Modern medicine and lifestyle (indoor plumbing, vaccines, antibiotics, refrigeration, mosquito control, medicines for killing parasites, ...) have done an amazing job preventing those in wealthy countries.

Does anyone wonder why we have antibiotic resistant bacteria? I thought that was pretty widely understood (at least by those who accept the science of evolution)...

Re: YC Bio

#69

Post by hateduser2 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #56
dokein wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a physician, you're absolutely right. There is a HUGE range of problems that can be made better by proper diet and regular exercise. Although there are a few efforts here and there, nobody has figured out a reliable way of changing human behavior when the initial action is hard but the rewards are far away. We seem only to be good at short-circuiting dopamine reward pathways so people log in to Facebook more often…

controlled trials proving that secretion management (e.g. DNase), The current mental model is that people with CF overproduce mucus and are drowning in their own mucus. I believe this to be incorrect. We underproduce mucus. Giving the body what it needs to produce enough mucus makes a big difference. Inadequate mucus production is one of the ways the body's immune system is compromised and fixing that is entirely abo…

Why would you think this isn’t a socially acceptable POV? I’ve never heard it before and it doesn’t come across as noxious to me.

Re: YC Bio

#70

Post by subcosmos »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #21

Color me skeptical. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have gotten myself mostly well when that is not supposed to be possible. I was a homemaker for a long time. Eating right and germ control are a very large part of what I do and it isn't rocket science, as they say. I also can see no means to turn it into a business model or income stream, nor even get anyone interested in benefiting from what I know for free. It…

You've effectively hit the nail on the head, but it is actually within the purview of what YC is specifically focused on regarding diseases of aging.

Aging biology is all about understanding how diseases develop to begin with, and lifestyle interventions are definitely part of that umbrella of research. Those of us who obsess over aging biology tend to prefer thinking about preventative strategies first, and rejuvenation as a fallback.

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