Hacker News Reader

Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that's amazing. I hope the results hold up.

My father died of type 2 non hodkins lymphoma in 1997 when I was 17; he was sick for 4 years from two rounds of lymphoma, plus a marrow transplant. Every time I read about advances like this I feel bad about wasting my life building better advertising instead of doing biomed. I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values. And now I feel like Steve Yegge.

View on HN

> It's a lesson in what our society really values.

Not to be a jerk, but it's about what _you_ value. If you value money (or lifestyle, or whatever drew you to advertising) over whatever you were doing previously, you've had your way. If you don't, you have the choice to go back.

Don't feel bad about not working in the right industry; just remember that there are thousands of ways to help progress the state of the art, raise money or awareness for those progressing the state of the art, or even just helping people and their families dealing with cancers.

I don't work in a philanthropic job. I would like to, but value the financial stability of something further removed from pure altruism.

Characterizing not wanting a lower middle class lifestyle as wanting "money or lifestyle [sic]" is ridiculous. Working in a wetlab is essentially me making a $80K annual donation to charity, and amongst other things, would turn my student loans from a minor nuisance into a major expenditure. If society actually valued medical and cancer treatments instead of mouthing the words (which is free), there wouldn't be disparities like that, and working in a wetlab wouldn't be a major life sacrifice.

In practice, we spend $31B or so on the NIH [1], but we have $170B in fiscal year 2010 [2] for Iraq and Afghanistan, plus all the tail costs involved.

[1] http://www.nih.gov/about/director/budgetrequest/NIH_BIB_0209...

[2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html

Society doesn't value cures - where's the money in that? Society _really_ gets off on long-term addictions.

Reminds me of the Chris Rock skit. The money is in the medicine, not the cure.

I'm generalizing, but It seems as if institutions who have made a living researching treatments to major diseases don't seem that interested in cures. That could threaten their existence. So they put their money in providing hospital services instead of research. They can't get government money for research grants if their idea for research seems too unorthodox.

In the end, it's about protecting jobs and finding a way for you to live longer with the disease.

Well, you don't even have to be cynical (although, having worked years on contract at Eli Lilly, I'm pretty cynical). All you have to do is look at the way the FDA is structured to see that you have to generate a lot of money for any new drug or technique just to be able to pay for its approval. The only way you can do that reliably is by always shooting for the maintenance dose of $300 a month from every patient. A one-time shot just isn't going to pass the math test.

As is always the refrain, the system is broken - if what you want is cures instead of a large and lucrative pharmaceutical industry.

I am normally not one to bemoan downvoting (I have enough karma that the occasional misstep doesn't really hurt me, and meta discussion is something I also don't want cluttering up HNN) but this one has me stymied at -3.

It seems patently obvious to me that the structure of our pharmaceutical system encourages maintenance doses over cures, and I'm not sure what about that would provoke at least four people to take action not to see it.

The problem with trying to cure most diseases is it's hard, not unprofitable. Most drugs are closer to replacing the oil early which can prolong the life of an engine, it's not as good as a refit but it's a lot simpler. Take diabetes, a cure requires you to fix any of a huge number of possible breakdowns in a wide range of systems; treatment requires administering a single chemical based on glucose levels. Which do you think is harder? Shure, in 100 years we might be able to repair someone’s DNA with minimal side effects based on what’s broken but that’s a long way off.

PS: People talk about drug companies funding research, but mostly they just do refinements and late stage clinical trials. They have minimal impact on the type of research that actually discovers how things work or the basic ideas for how to fix things and if a cure for a major ailment was possible they would jump on even a modest cash cow.

Granted, insulin is a great solution that works well enough to save a lot of pain, and diabetes is a complex condition. I'm not saying maintenance doses are always wrong - nothing is ever always wrong. I'm saying maintenance doses are profitable, and there's little incentive to look farther, unless you're just one of those nuts who can't help it. The nuts end up dragging the rest of us along, usually - so in the end, we end up muddling through. And you clearly can't make it a policy to fund all the nuts, because most of them are, well, they're nuts.

I remain convinced that funds could be allocated somewhat better. In this as in so very many other things.

I worked in the biomed industry as a research chemist and I can tell that there are plenty of pharma companies that would love to bring any profitable drug to market. Nobody is going to sit on a working cure. Drug research just happens to be really, really hard, with plenty of opportunities to fail right up to the last step with billions up in smoke.

You're mixing up society with government.

And, by the way, you have not refuted grandparent at all. Much on the contrary, you have only ratified that you have chosen money and lifestyle over working on something you believe in. I don't think gp was judging you for that, only saying that was indeed your choice.

> And, by the way, you have not refuted grandparent at all. Much on the contrary, you have only ratified that you have chosen money and lifestyle over working on something you believe in.

The two aren't incompatible. He chose the money. If society truly valued medical research, he wouldn't have had to make that choice -- the money would be in medical research.

You've implicitly dismissed the most likely case: there is an abundance of biology / chemistry graduates willing to work in a wetlab to help cure cancer. Supply & demand of skilled labor is a much more likely cause (ie: highly correlated) than what "society actually valued".

> I just wish biomed paid better wages -- I much more than doubled my income by leaving a wetlab and doing advertising instead. It's a lesson in what our society really values.

This bothers me greatly.

I don't want to threadjack, but are any HN'ers aware of discussion elsewhere about what concerned members of society who do value biomed progress more strongly than most, but who don't have Milken-level money might be able to do to promote faster progress?

I'd be very interested in exploring how YC-like entrepreneurial energy could be unleashed on improving human health, and would be willing to chip in.

The short term solution is venture philanthropy, something that Peter Thiel has spoken on recently:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/peter-thiel-encou...

In short big philanthropy needs a component that looks a lot like the venture capital industry, and doesn't currently have it. Lots of smaller, big risk, potentially game changing bets rather than stultifying into safe big-budget, incremental institutional irrelevance.

In this case, for example, this research was rescued from years further of oblivion by a funding source that was willing to take a risk.

Much thinking has taken place on this. You might look at some of Aubrey de Grey's early publications on the triangular log jam for example:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/06/the-curious-case-...

Don't hold your breath...

Product cycle is much slower in the biomed industry and much more expensive. Potential financial gains are high, but risk is also very high. Even getting started in this industry means a hefty investment is necessary.

In short, not really suitable for a YC-like incubator. At least not at this point.

Similar story here. Mom died of the same disease.

I did join a stem cell related company from their beginnings. It was cool to see it grow thinking I was doing good, until I realized at least in my case it was more about making the owners money rather than finding cures for these kind of diseases.

Quitting the day job and switching to biomed maybe could help, but I believe instead there's a need to start something more radical rather than being +1 cog.

I don't think your conclusion about society's values necessarily follows. In a society that valued biomed more, you'd have to pay the same candidate a higher salary to get them to work in advertising.

Ewww wierd

Uh, typically when society "values" an industry more, they show their appreciation of this value through a higher salary.

Exactly, a perfect example of this is how society values cleaning ladies much more highly than brain surgeons or CEOs.

Usually you have to pay brain surgeons and CEOs orders of magnitude more money to take those jobs, when normally they might prefer to live off the glory of cleaning up after slobs.

You can help by working in biomed or by giving them money. In your situation the obvious choice is not to change career.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com