What they won't tell you...

m and is evolving fairly rapidly) and their patients healthy cells, and the re are some schemes to get the patient's killer T-cells trained up to attac k the cancer rather than the patient's healthy cells, but they do seem to b e expensive.

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nt

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l the

a lot closer to mindless empiricism than it ought to be.

Not in Michael Terrell's reality, for sure. NT's own grasp of reality doesn 't look that secure to less right-wing observers either.

ence because the evidence is so often too bent to be useful, and doctors ar e well aware that a research result does not mean reality. So it often fall s back on what they found worked before and what other doctors do. Unfortun ately a good bit of it is much worse than that too. The level and degree of reality of evidence varies a lot by topic.

Medical sociology isn't pretty. Senior medico's bully more junior medico's, and only pay attention to evidence when the evidence lines up with their p ersonal prejudices. The Cochrane collaboration was set up in 1993 because i t was perceived as necessary.

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Some of my doctors have got the message, but by no means all of them.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Most likely, I expect, the big breakthrough will be electronic and it will not be a new treatment. It will just be a method of early detection that can prevent cancer from ever growing enough to make removal difficult.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

If medicine hangs off biology, then biology hangs off biochemistry, which is a branch of chemistry. Chemistry is essentially explicable through physics, as chemistry involves the interaction of different atoms through their electrons. Whether a bond between different atoms is covalent or ionic (which the vast majority are), that bond is made using electrons. The last time I looked electrons were electrons, whether they were in a conductor/semiconductor (electronics) or a chemical bond (chemistry). To quote from the wiki on "Chemistry":

"A chemical reaction is a transformation of some substances into one or more different substances. The basis of such a chemical transformation is the rearrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds between atoms."

What do elephants or pilot whales read, as they have far more neurons than Guardian readers?

--

Jeff
Reply to
Jeff Layman

It has been quite some time since medical research was like "let's try something and see if it works, if so then let's call it a treatment".

Today, mechanisms of life and illnesses are understood more and more and treatments can more often be engineered just like you can repair an electronic circuit: not by blindly trying some component replacements but by studying what is wrong and how it can be rectified.

Of course this is not yet true for many illnesses, but the generic statement that treatment is hust copying what others do and the evidence (you must mean the statistics of the outcome) is often bent, is just plainly not true.

Reply to
Rob

For example, today a patient scan can be examined by image recognition software to check for cancer, and this examination works better (and of course faster) than the same thing done by a medical doctor.

Reply to
Rob

It will be truly understanding and manipulating cell mechanisms, the genetics of cell growth, cancer, cell death. There are now just hints of what's coming. Like growing custom viruses or t-cells that target cancers. Like growing new organs. Slowing or cancelling aging.

Not many people envisioned MRI or cell phones or GPS or home computers

100 years ago. Progress happens. Imagine.
--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

But it's true. Cancer treatment will some day be scientific, reliable, and painless. Now, it often involves awful surgery or viscious chemo, and still doesn't work. Better than nothing, but still barbaric.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Well... one only has to read "Bad Pharma" by Ben Goldacre to get a handle as to how corrupt the health system is.

-- Kevin Aylward

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- SuperSpice
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Reply to
Kevin Aylward

Where's my flying car? Or my holiday on the moon?

Reply to
Tom Gardner

a lot closer to mindless empiricism than it ought to be.

is one. It's often not based on evidence because the evidence is so often t oo bent to be useful, and doctors are well aware that a research result doe s not mean reality. So it often falls back on what they found worked before and what other doctors do. Unfortunately a good bit of it is much worse th an that too. The level and degree of reality of evidence varies a lot by to pic.

yes, thankfully

sometimes yes. Often not

I don't think you've understood where the problems are at all.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

OK, don't imagine.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

Is that a one way trip that he's taking.

Reply to
Michael A Terrell

The thing about futurism is that things change radically in 25 or 50 years, but almost never in the way people expected.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

ha! would you really want everybody & their deranged cousin to be flying about in 3-d, when most people can't handle 2-d motion if anything goes wrong?

Reply to
Bill Martin

Precisely.

A favourite example of mine is "in 1890, where would invest your blue-skies money dedicated to improving people's health". Few would put it into physicists playing around with high voltages and vacuums.

Nonetheless, even though the race does not always go to the fastest horse, that's the way to bet.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

It is fun, fun, fun, e.g.

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It helps if you are taught how to do that, so you can do it on your own when you are 14. Such 14yos are mature beyond their age, but cause and effect are entirely unclear!

Reply to
Tom Gardner

This rather misses the point. Physicists tend not to think too much about t he differences between the atoms that are bonded, and organic chemistry and biochemistry have to take note of the difference between the bond between two atoms as the other chemical bonds to those two atoms change.

Max Perutz got a Nobel Prize because he pointed out that the bonds between oxygen and or carbon dioxide in four iron atoms in haemoglobin vary in stre ngth as the number of oxygen or CO2 atoms bonded to the other iron atoms va ries.

The guy I mostly just beat out to "top of the boys" when we went through p rimary school together has a similar story about the metal atoms in chlorop hyll - which work together in a "reaction centre" to transfer the absorbed light energy to achieve charge separation.

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He'd worked out that about ten magnesium atoms get linked up - to some exte nt - to work the magic.

Medical biochemistry has even more complicated stuff going on.

The "reductionist" approach to chemistry and biochemisty can explain everyt hing - eventually - but it isn't the point of view that moves the field for ward,

uman-brain

Both elephants and pilot whales go in for vocal communication - as we do. T hey haven't worked out a written language yet, but elephants are better pla ced to do that than pilot whales.

A lot of the elephant's neurones are devoted to controlling it's trunk - th e neuron count for its cerebral cortex alone is less impressive - at about a third of ours and at about half what the other great apes have.

Pilot whales do a lot of sonar processing - they may not have as many freel y programmable neurons as we do (not that all that many of ours will be fre ely programmable either).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

If John Larkin looked at what was being imagined one hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago in the science fiction of the 1960's - he would be le ss tempted to exercise his imagination. Of course he doesn't know as much a s a science fiction author of that period - Isaac Asimov had a Ph.D. in che mistry - so he's even less aware of the limits of his imagination.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Effective reliable cancer treatment seems to be following the path of nuclear fusion power - twenty five years away, and always has been.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

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