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Comment by dtech | Hacker News Reader

Except for maybe the last paragraph, this is not new information to basically anyone performing studies. The problem is we don't have any ethically and scientifically better alternatives.

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We are getting there. In-vitro methods, often involving cell cultures, are gaining traction. In-silico, also.

Robotic automation and synthetic biology help with that a lot. Machine learning can help make sense of more limited data, for example predicting toxicity and other parameters for drugs so that you can better choose what to forward to Human trials.

In vitro studies have been done for ages, but are often a worse model than closely related organisms. For instance, there are various human cancer cell lines and while these are routinely used to study various aspects of biology (cancer being just one of them), they are generally a poor model for drug trials. The current research trend goes towards developing organoids — cell cultures with a distinct 3D organisation and biological makeup that mimics actual organs — that more closely resemble actual human tissues. It’s still early days though.

Organoids do count as in vitro. And as I said, synthetic biology, automation and machine learning help in improving these methods.

Nothing can replace certain studies in Humans completely. We can only hope to make those more effective by better choice of candidate drugs.

Absolutely. My phrasing wasn’t clear, I was contrasting organoids with the cell cultures mentioned in your reply, not with in vitro studies in general.

Organoids, organ-on-chip, 3D cell cultures, have all shown to be equivalent to each other, and better than standard 2D cell culture. Ultimately they are not very complex, definitely more than a monoculture, but no where near an organism that evolved from a single cell.

They haven’t shown to be a good proxy for a whole organism.

On term of disease model, they are typically artificial in the sense that genetically engineer the cell with a specific mutation that may or may not represent the disease or the population.

And if an experiment doesn’t work the way you want, you are a new set and sometimes it works the way you want.

The only two things they have over mice is that they can be from human origin, and sometimes that human origin might be in a disease state that you want to study, which might be the only way to generate a model for complex disease...

In-vitro and In-silico modelling might be of great use is for known problems that come up for candidate drugs in the early clinical phase: Interaction with receptors (blood/brain barrier, QT prolongation etc) or liver proteins or the like.

Of course, we are talking about the fruits on the drug tree which are potentially reachable by singular small molecule drugs.

I've been in science quite some time and worked with lots of rats in animal care facilities and this is the first time I've heard of the fact that mice need 30 deg. C instead of normal room temperatures to avoid stress.

There is an alternate. To wake up from the ignorant direction the so called studies are taking the human kind to. And stop calling it science. Dr. B.M. Hedge suggested long ago that all the studies done on animals or humans are wrong and inefficient in so many fronts. His words - According to ayurveda, human body can be classified into around 200 types based on the K/P/H balance of a body. A medicine that works for one may be totally neutral for another. So, you read a paper that claims it got awesome results on a random blindfold study, the question Dr. Hedge asks is what type of the 200 human body types is it efficient? Apparently there is a body type that gives neutral or negative results (ignoring side effects). Talk about working it on animals first! (-ve downvotes welcome)

> According to ayurveda, human body can be classified into around 200 types based on the K/P/H balance of a body.

Maybe you'd first need peer-reviewed research to prove that...

Here's a nice smackdown which I don't have the time or knowledge to offer myself:

"He abandons [Dr. B.M. Hegde] all rational thinking and embraces fantastical belief systems. The sad thing is I personally know many people delaying cancer treatment being swayed by his speeches and ending up with incurable metastasis later."

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-agree-with-the-controversial-vi...

Understood. May be the modern world needs another wim hof to become a subject to the existing science - validity though current limited existing medical tools to prove/validate that humans can get access to autonomous nervous system and heal themselves (which was thought to be impossible in modern days). The approach Dr. hedge took is not registering with the rest of the world according to the comments above. May be he should have proven his claims subjecting to the existing methods just to give that level of confidence who trusts it like wim hof did.

It's not about giving confidence to people, the existing methods are part of the fundamental idea of the scientific method. Dr. Hegde's claim of body types doesn't really mean anything until there's evidence to back it up. And modern medical trials are crafted and investigated with a wide variety of statistical tools to determine the exact impact of a treatment method. Only if his claims can stand up to this rigorous scrutiny can they be accepted the way existing models are. The rest of the world will then sit up and take notice, exactly because only then will there be something for them to take notice of.

An appeal to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda doesn't really stand on it's own until it's backed by solid peer reviewed science. It's really not that hard, a well designed set of trials proving your point will have the entire world at your feet. Modern science is extremely receptive of new ideas that way.

Agree. Unfortunately, this is never going to happen. The few still practicing Ayurveda properly come from a background where they learned it from their ancestors within their family and practicing it for free and never allow commercialization of their knowledge. But they can gladly share the knowledge to people who want to learn. Food, Education and Medicine/health are the 3 things the practitioners in Indian culture believes to keep free. A few decades ago, you want to gain education, you seek a guru and become a disciple and he teaches for free. You got a health issue, you go to a doctor and he treats you for free. Same with food, every town/village used to have centers where food is served free to anyone. Although it's all gone decades ago, there are still practitioners who treat patients for free and only take donations and not fee. Sounds, funny but It's easy to understand the underlying wisdom, how many studies today are funded by people with commercial interests? Research on egg is funded by Meat industry, Research on milk is funded by Diary industry etc. How is that turning out for everyone?

In fact, most studies are funded either by governments or via donations from the public. Some public studies are partially funded by industry, but with a big caveat: industry has no say on how the studies are conducted, or even what is being studied: industry contributions to public research are not bound to research outcomes. And all this information is readily available, since publicly funded research institutes publish their funding sources.

It’s true that industry is funding some (publicly published) research directly, and that some research publications fail to disclose their funding source and other conflicts of interest. But for the vast majority of biomedical research, especially fundamental research, this simply isn’t the case.

And it requires a complete suspension of one’s critical thinking capacities to imagine that some vast, weird conspiracy encompasses all of public research, to suppress the “truth” that Ayurveda works, contradicting everything we know from modern medicine as well as basic physics and chemistry. And all that just to make a few pharmaceutical company bosses rich? Why would I, lowly researcher on a sub-par salary, contribute to such a conspiracy? It’s completely irrational.

> How is that turning out for everyone?

Dramatically increased life expectancy, reduced childhood mortality, etc.

There are problems with the modern health system, but it does seem to produce much better outcomes than what came before.

> Unfortunately, this is never going to happen. The few still practicing Ayurveda properly come from a background where they learned it from their ancestors within their family and practicing it for free and never allow commercialization of their knowledge. But they can gladly share the knowledge to people who want to learn.

How is it possible that they could have prevented that information from ending up in the hands of profiteers even after all these years? And no profit hungry pharmaceutical company has ever been able to rediscover and commercialize those techniques, even though the details of them are mostly freely available on the internet?

I appreciate the honestly in this answer, and your willingness to accept how people see something you clearly seem to care about.

As for commercialization of Ayurveda, I see this as exactly what's happening now with Patanjali etc trying to cash in on people's trust in their culture without providing a proper research base for their claims.

Another reply to your comment above makes very good points about research funding, and in my experience, funding is to a large extent non partisan, and free from industry influence. There are even rules on disclosure of funding about major studies, which makes it possible to criticize them.

I only wish that Ayurveda is held to the same standards as other medicine, and passes through the fire of testing the same way all modern medicine has. It's how we know that antibiotics work, or about interactions between medicines, or about side effects and complications. It will ultimately benefit the field, and medicine as a whole.

We know that there are things in humans that make them react differently to medications. We know _why_ this because of rigorous science.

Typing out that you are prepared for downvotes doesn't really change who has drank the Flavor Aid.

I don't get it. If you can't trust researchers who perform studies to validate their results, then what is it which makes this guy trustworthy to you? He has done strictly less than that to validate his results.

I am not against validity through studies. But the approach/methodology taken in most studies on food/drugs are very limited in nature and often flawed giving skewed results (e.g. I hope everyone knows about the approach taken in dividing fat into 3 categories and how it is taken as reference to ruin health of so many humans over decades through refined oils). I totally agree with him in that regard.

Dr. Hedge sounds like a quack.

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