Hacker News Reader

Comment by Vecr | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, however

> to reduce the risk of finger or toe amputation

is not how risk works, similar to a basic conditionalization that tells you not to go to the doctor for an illness as that action would provide evidence for an increased probability of death.

View on HN

> is not how risk works, similar to a basic conditionalization that tells you not to go to the doctor for an illness as that action would provide evidence for an increased probability of death.

I don't know what you're saying here, but this medication is an injection that is given to someone by doctors after they've sought emergency medical treatment.

The article was trying to communicate that it increases the odds of being able to keep the appendage. Debating the wording is rather pedantic.

Assuming you're fine with (somewhat debatable) casual language, "this drug (probably) causes probabilistic physical events leading to a lower chance of medically determined necessity to amputate, conditional on the correct medical examination being done at the right times".

This is analogous to how much medical research is done. Unless you want to go the literal Nazi method of inducing illness or incapacity and then testing remedies, this is sort of the best we have. Final stage medical research involves humans to test on. Preferably voluntarily, and preferably when they require the treatment through actual misfortune .

It's exactly how risk works. The primary definition if risk is "possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger," according to The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language.

It should be closer to casual than the simplest conditionalization you can do, right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com