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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

My main criticism and cynicism from articles like these (related: prosthetics) is that they help the few people that are lucky, popular, or rich; lucky to have a doctor or to find a program and get into it; popular because they end up in social media 'feel good' posts and articles; rich because it's experimental, low-volume tech or treatments that require going abroad. Popular can also translate to being able to afford it, but it's shameful that people have to post their stories online to raise money. (shameful to society that is, not the people who are driven by desperation).

But I guess things like this will eventually trickle down to general and widespread availability, just technological advancements like cochlear implants and pacemakers did.

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Oh, knock it off.

What these people did is nothing short of amazing.

Yet, here we are - a completely generic and trivial "critique" comment is the highest upvoted sentiment. On the HN of all places. Jesus.

The same "complaint" can be lodged against ANY novel treatment before it's fully productized for mass adoption.

> Yet, here we are - a completely generic and trivial "critique" comment is the highest upvoted sentiment. On the HN of all places. Jesus.

And 26 minutes later it's now downvoted. HN is working as intended, you just have to wait and let the community do it's job.

I waited for this.

I agree with you and always have to think about "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy": https://youtu.be/nUBtKNzoKZ4

-- and I don't care it's Louis C.K. saying it. Like I don't care if a songs from Michael Jackson is playing. Still true.

That's generally how things with new tech. Initially expensive; it gets cheaper over time. Eventually patents run out and everybody gets in on the action.

We all want the biggest amount of people have something that improves their life.

However, I am yet to see a single service or product or improvement that all humanity took at the same instant. It simply does not or won't ever exist.

These things need work, feedback, improvement. It is literally impossible to deliver things at the same time to everyone. Besides that, if that happened, but cannot, you would also make exactly the same mistakes with almost everyone. So tak e for granted that people that come later are granted to take improved versions of these techniques.

Economy in the sense of scarcity and availability, was, is and will be always like this. If you wanted everyone to have this at the same time the only reality is these people would have to wait until general availability, things would probably be slower bc of the loop feedback and noone would get this benefit, just these three people would not get ir. So noone wins this way, except your feeling of fairness. But it is notba rational choice.

What we need is massification and learning of these tecniques as they are certified as safe and to lower its price as much as it is possible to spread its availability.

I think your negativity comes from the frustration that you cannot accept reality as it is. We all want what you say. It is just not how things work, unfortunately.

I see it differently, I think articles like are important by making people aware of solutions like these which will speed up the time needed to get them to people not as fortunate to have access to them now. More awareness means more people will work towards making the solution, lowering their cost.

I'd agree with this sentiment. These articles make people excited and bring awareness plus, if you allow me to speculate, I bet someone with paralysis who at least sees these articles and realizes they might have a chance to walk in the future will feel better than someone who doesn't see them. Knowing there is a chance makes it easier to cope with problems. Or maybe I'm wrong, tell me if I am, I fully understand my perspective may be skewed.

I have a few medical problems that aren't solvable with current technology, seeing articles like these related to my issue gets me excited and hopeful that I'll be cured one day.

And as an engineer it brings attention to me that there are companies solving these problems that I could work for to speed up the effort.

Do you have any ideas or advice on how these products should be developed instead?

Sorry if that came off as antagonistic. I think I actually agree with the overall sentiment that luck and popularity shouldn't be barriers to healthcare, but experimentation is a necessary part of the process. And at the very least, luck is inherent to experimentation.

Obviously, medical experiments should only be done on the poorest and neediest segment of the population. There's no way to spin THAT as exploitative. ;D

Please this is public research from a public University, what do you expect? That they can scale it to 1000 of people? This is research as intended, now commercial products may be built out of this but it will take time again.

You don’t have to worry about that. If it’s possible, the market will solve that. Think of this as a proof of concept that viable tech and a potential market exists.

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