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Comment by nerdponx | Hacker News Reader

This is approaching Star Trek levels of medicine. Congratulations to the team who discovered and pull this off, and of course my heart goes out to the family and their child. Drowning is very serious and very scary.

Edit: somewhat unrelated since this girl fell into an unattended pool, but it's important to know the signs of drowning, which are not what you see in movies: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-spot-signs-of-a-child-dro...

Edit 2: I get that people have a right to downvote whatever they want, but seriously, did I say something wrong here?

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> “The startling regrowth of tissue in this case occurred because we were able to intervene early in a growing child, before long-term tissue degeneration. Although it’s impossible to conclude from this single case if the sequential application of normobaric oxygen then HBOT would be more effective than HBOT alone, in the absence of HBOT therapy, short duration, repetitive normobaric oxygen therapy may be an option until HBOT is available."

It was done for the first time, we have no idea what really did the magic here, we can just assume. In any future medicine scenario I'd expect us to exactly know what we are doing and how it works. Yes medicine is improving but we really are in the dark ages still.

>we really are in the dark ages still

No, we'd be in the dark ages if we were in still the dark ages. Our current level of progress would seem like science fiction or even magic as little as a century ago.

I think I understand your point, that we have so much more to learn we're not even able to quantify what we don't know.

But this is not some kind of endless quest. We're dealing with a machine in the end with finite complexity and eventually it will be understood fundamentally.

I don't think I would be surprised if the most common diseases were eliminated in the next 100 to 200 years.

>But this is not some kind of endless quest. We're dealing with a machine in the end with finite complexity and eventually it will be understood fundamentally.

I'm guessing you don't work in the medical field (I have). First their's the emergent complexity of scale (after all the universe consists of a finite number of a small number of fundamental particles). Second, the human body (and all the pathogens etc) are object code highly optimized over billions of years. We understand almost nothing about how it all works. We can transcribe most of a human's genome but barely understand how even a tiny part of it works.

> I don't think I would be surprised if the most common diseases were eliminated in the next 100 to 200 years.

The most common causes of death have been pretty much eliminated in the wealthy world over the last 50 years. People still die, just of a wider variety of less common reasons. In the limiting case, each person will die of a unique cause.

To extend your metaphor a little, we can transcribe a pseudo source-code (nuclear DNA), a preprocessor or macro language that we have learned a little about (epigenetic regulation), and there are still two levels of IR after that. The object code might be the trillions of combinations of amino acids that make up the proteome.

The point is, even if the complexity is large, it's not infinite. And over the last few centuries we got pretty good at developing both mental and technological tools to tackle the complexity. While a human can't be expected to keep track of e.g. all the methabolic pathways described in medical textbooks and research papers, it's not a huge deal for a computer. Now of course that is only one of the points in a web of complexity that recursively expands in breadth and depth - but that only invites us to build more and better tools.

> People still die, just of a wider variety of less common reasons. In the limiting case, each person will die of a unique cause.

Right now, human lives are still capped at ~120 years, and usually much less than 100. In the (mathematical) limit, each person will die of a unique cause at age infinite. While we won't ever reach that limit, it's worth to continue getting closer to it.

>guessing you don't work in the medical field

Maybe the fact I don't actually makes it easier to understand biological complexity.

You guys have to figure out how to fix a brain when it breaks.

In CS, a holy grail is to match or exceed human cognition with general AI. It's not fixing something broken, its reverse engineering or alternatively engineering from scratch the greatest known computational device in the universe which has evolved over a billion years.

It's often not appreciated that this hasn't happened yet not due to lack of computing power. It hasn't happened yet because we're still not even remotely close to knowing what code to write if we did have 10,000 times more compute. We don't know how to do it, and instead are forced to plod along in awe as every year we learn a little more about what we don't know.

> I think I understand your point, that we have so much more to learn we're not even able to quantify what we don't know. But this is not some kind of endless quest. We're dealing with a machine in the end with finite complexity and eventually it will be understood fundamentally.

I see this as agreeing with the person you're replying to. We can make certain limited interventions which are amazing, but the kind of complete understanding that you're referring to is a long, long way away. Even when we do have a treatment, we often do not fully understand how they work.

I think we have already done a bangup job eliminating "common diseases" over the past 70 years.

Now we just have to eliminate stupidity so all those hard-won gains don't get undone because of a handful of anti-vax types.

And coordination problems, so that if we succeed with anti-vaxxers we won't get killed by farmers abusing antibiotics on farm animals.

Nice side effect of solving coordination problems include: solving poverty, solving peace on Earth. :).

A little over a century ago and there was still debate about germ theory.

Unfortunately there are still some people who don't believe it today :(

> we have no idea what really did the magic here, we can just assume

...which is true of most of medicine. Most indications (e.g. diseases) are named after their symptoms rather than causes, and a lot of treatment is just creating / improving the environment in which the body can do its job.

None of which should be taken as denigration of amazing achievements in the medical field!

Exactly. I recognise all those achievements, yet we still have to learn so much more.

Useful site to see what drowning looks like.

http://spotthedrowningchild.com

I swear, there is a website for EVERYTHING.

Also be aware of "dry drowning," it's incredibly rare but worth knowing it exists and it's symptoms if you or anyone you are caring for has a near drowning episode.

http://www.parents.com/kids/safety/outdoor/dry-drowning/

"Any child pulled from the pool needs medical attention," says Dr. Berchelmann. "At the very least, call the pediatrician."

https://dockatevaccineblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/18/dry-drow....

Our daughter was coughing after swimming in a river a few weeks ago, and my mother in law found the dry drowning stuff on the internet. I was like "dry drowning doesn't exist," but we called a nursing hotline which told us to go to the ER. The doctor checked out the kid, then asked us for the number of the nursing hotline so she could yell at them for sending parents to the ER over a condition that doesn't exist.

That page does not say dry drowning doesn't exist and does not contradict a single thing that was said in the link I posted.

No shit swallowing water is not the same as aspirating [breathing] it and nobody said it was!

"And I’m pretty sure everyone understands that a child who is down in the water, gets pulled out, and requires resuscitation needs immediate medical attention, even if they seem to recover." - No, they might not!!! And that's the point!!!

The takeaway is:

If someone has a serious near-drowning episode they should seek medical attention even if they appear fine.

If someone exhibits symptoms listed after aspirating water, they should seek medical attention.

Wait, he didn't say "this link says there's no such thing as dry drowning". He said he was told to take his daughter to the doctor over suspected dry drowning, actually did so, and the doctor got upset because there's no such thing as dry drowning.

His doctor contradicted you, and the advice you gave at the end of your comment. Are you also a doctor?

Actually his doctor is mostly right, however dry drowning can occur, but only from immersion in dihydrogen monoxide.

I implicitly trust most of what I hear from a doctor, even when it defies intuition. But I have much less trust for what I hear secondhand, i.e. when someone says "my doctor said". There's simply too great a likelihood for signal corruption along the way. Patients can fail to communicate context to their doctors, miss subtleties in the communication back, and fail to relay context once again when they relate their stories to other lay folk. And no, I am not a doctor :)

since i first heard of dry drowning earlier this summer, i haven't been able to enjoy a pool with my 1 and 2 year olds. It's taken the place of SIDS for me.

I assume you take the preventative measures for SIDS?

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Sudden-infant-death-syndrome/Pa...

DO: as a parent, wake up repeatedly and check your infant for symptoms of SIDS three times a night. Ensure wife does the same 5 times a night.

I'm speaking a little in hyperbole here, but you get the point I'm sure.

Don't they have infant and toddler level swimming classes?

Yes, and it's possibly the best time to start! "Mommy and Me" swim class when I was 18 months old meant that I learned to swim before conscious memory - I don't remember not knowing how to swim.

My mom was a great parent and wonderful overall, but that was a particularly excellent decision of hers. She was still careful with my little brother and me around water - we were enrolled in Red Cross swim classes during the summers in elementary school, and always had lifejackets on at the lake. Despite being terrible at pretty much all sports (unlike my athletically-gifted brother), I was always a decent swimmer.

Both of my kids can happily float /doggie paddle in floaties so far, with the older one in daily classes. She started at age 6 months--she's old enough to understand it, but the article that prompted my fears was about a 6 year old who just happened to inhale enough water to make a difference a week later. My younger one is still testing to see what he can get away with, and can't communicate things like "hey my chest feels funny" yet.

When my wife and I were on our honeymoon we watched a couple throw their 6 month old (10 month maybe? wasn't walking, only crawling) in the pool over and over again. Most of the pool looked on in horror, but they had taught her the "leg kick to turn over onto her back and float" skill. Definitely gave us perspective.

Best to stick em in the basement till they're 40!

Dry Drowning takes place after children have a serious near drowning incident. Water has to get in the lungs you will know this has happened you won't be surprised by it.

We just got done doing a swimming class for our 2 year old and this was addressed in the class. I highly recommend you take a class with your children. Classes for younger than 3 years old are done with parents in the water. It'll make both your children and you much more comfortable and safe.

We are not approaching Star Trek levels of medicine. In Star Trek, they can heal wounds by shining a light on them. They can erase and alter people's memory. They can scan for problems using a handheld device. They can cure blindness with a visor. We are nowhere near any of that.

I know this doesn't really matter much, but if we're going to throw in hyperbole, it should at least be somewhat accurate. I think people are boo'ing anyone who brings up this point because it's such an incredible achievement. That's true, it is, and it's amazing that brain damage was reversed. But Star Trek is a useful, iconic yardstick for measuring our progress. Saying we're close to it discounts how much work we have left to do.

I think you have to keep charity in mind on that compliment. It was meant as high praise for the medical achievement of curing someone. Not as reductionism to shining a light and magically curing something. More, that was pretty clear just in the comment.

To that end, I'm curious how Star Trek is a useful iconic yardstick? My assertion would be that it is not. It is a common one. But there is nothing useful in it. Precisely because you have to cherry pick what parts you use and how you interpret them. For example, you interpreted it to refer to the method of curing. The comment was taking it for the level of the sickness that was cured. Both are valid places to look.

I'm curious how Star Trek is a useful iconic yardstick?

I suppose it's sentimentality. If you watch TNG (which is difficult nowadays -- it's so far out of time), the writers made some interesting observations.

We now have the capability to ask the computer for information (Google), the ability to send each other messages (email), and we can verbally ask the computer questions (Siri). Touch interface (iPhone). These are landmark achievements, and they were all predicted by a show which ended in 1994, before the advent of the internet. The technology predictions have generally been on-point, and it seems like a useful metric for how far humanity can progress.

It may have more to teach: it was clearly a Post-scarcity society with some form of UBI,etc.

Simultaneously it postulated that the humans of the future would not be cyborgs, which appears unlikely. Furthermore, few tasks were automated in a manner we might see in our lifetime, let alone the time of the show.

Star Trek doesn't so much predict as it does inspire. We keep getting Trekky things in the real world because people want to make Trekky things; there's much work going on right now on tricorders, more directly inspired Trek tech.

> These are landmark achievements, and they were all predicted by a show which ended in 1994, before the advent of the internet.

Umm. I was reading about TNG on the web in 1994. The internet had been around for a long time before the web was useful to ordinary people. Email has been around since the 70s. Search engines were certainly limited, but were already available in the early 90s.

All these predictions succeeded because they were "predicting" incremental improvement on something already known to exist.

I get the sentimentality. But about the only part of the show that I feel resonates in the truly somewhat predictive mode, is how many tablet style interfaces they had. And even then, that is a bit of a stretch.

I'd wager most of the things that you are quoting were less pioneered by Star Trek, and moreso popularized to an audience. In particular, using a computer to find information, talking to a computer, and sending messages electronically have long been staples in science fiction. Before science fiction, the only thing that was different was the "electronically" part. And really, I don't know as even Star Trek was treating "electronically" any different than earlier stories used "magically."

Call it sentimentality, but I don't feel like watching TNG is that difficult nowadays. It's old and missing some of the tech we have today, but if you can suspend your disbelief on that, it stands pretty well.

(To those who haven't watched TNG, the whole series is on Netflix, mostly (entirely?) in the remastered edition, so no TV-like quality. A piece of caution: this is not your typical sci-fi; it's much more positive about the future, science and technology than what we get served on TV these days.)

RE the yardstick thing - there's still lots of things that in Star Trek are shown as easy, and that they feel like they should be easy with sufficiently advanced tech, and that are still hard for us today. So it's maybe less of an yardstick and more of a goal / reminder that there's lots to be done yet.

>before the advent of the internet.

The internet was around well before 1994.

> if we're going to throw in hyperbole, it should at least be somewhat accurate

Exaggeration is an essential part of the definition of hyperbole. Merriam-Webster literally gives the definition of the word simply as "extravagant exaggeration."[1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole

> In Star Trek, they can heal wounds by shining a light on them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorefractive_keratectomy

> They can erase and alter people's memory

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14572521, plus lots of pharmacological stuff in spook-land which is well-attested but rarely peer-reviewed.

> They can scan for problems using a handheld device.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/26/health/ai-system-detects-s...

> We are nowhere near any of that.

In the case of your specific examples, we are. It's early days and unevenly distributed, but actually we are getting there.

Maybe your comment is correct in whole, but your examples immediately brought to mind science headlines from the past few years. Specifically the use of Near InfraRed (NIR) light to treat Multiple Sclerosis, the use of blue light to heal wounds and disinfect, reading the states of neurons in hydra and also in mice, implanting false memories into mice, and a plethora of transportable medical scanners. The implementation is not what a viewer would imagine, but they all meet the descriptions as written. Even if we are not near, we are undoubtedly approaching "Star Trek" technology by so narrowly attempting to replicate it.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131022102227.h...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130910142334.h...

http://www.dailytech.com/New+Miracle+Diagnosis+Handheld+Medi...

https://www.cnet.com/news/esight-video-glasses-restores-sigh...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/03/vision-chip-...

Also I remember a video about counter intuitive signs of drowning. People except movie drowning with screamings and arm waving but average drowning is silent, like a kid on a floater flipping up and getting stuck upside down. Almost invisible if you don't watch for it.

well, it took a few months. that thing on chekov's head took like 30 seconds.

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