Hacker News Reader

Comment by petermcneeley | Hacker News Reader

A biopsy is predicated on the idea that you can identify good from bad. You might not be able to identify the origin cell but you would be able to pick out metastasization.

You certainly can take pictures. And not to be too reductive: cells are visible in a light microscope. The point is that the scale that cells are at is not really at the quantum level. People have been interacting with individual cells for decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTiKFCkPaUE

I also have a degree in physics but in addition I have a degree in computer science. 36 Trillion is not a very large number for modern computers anymore. I am sure even today we could build machines that would filter the cells in your blood by images and do it at 10s of millions per second.

View on HN

Imagine thinking you're teaching a pathologist anything about evaluating neoplastic cells.... Like even as a doctor who's not a pathologist I wouldn't dare because I know just how much I don't know compared to them. A CS grad thinking they can jump in on that is peak tech-centric hubris.

We get pretty arrogant for sure, but from an outsider point of view at least this looks more like somebody pitching a perpetual motion machine to physicists, rather than typical tech-centric hubris.

Appeals to authority tend not to fly in a hacker community which is all about questioning authority and the status quo. It is usually much better to respond with logic and refutation.

I really can't tell if you're trolling at this point but in the chance you aren't, I'll bite.

Appealing to the authority of a pathologist is safe in my book given the subject matter and the education of the counterparty. There is a lower bound of requisite knowledge beneath which it's not worth even trying to entertain your claims about just "find and destroy rogue cells". You can't even begin to respond with logic and refutation if you haven't achieved anything close to the level of expertise required to be certified as a pathologist. Coming in here trying to play the angle of "well just model with supercomputers" isn't the winning ticket. Contrary to stereotypes of computer-illiterate doctors, there are some wicked smart people working in medicine (I've met and befriended many) and I guarantee your genius approach was considered and abandoned decades ago.

Looking through his comments, I think he's young and, as tends to go with youth, frustrated. This comment elsewhere in thread suggests he may be coming around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895503

I am not that young. If you go back far enough in the comments you will see that I completed my physics degree 15 years ago. I studied quite a bit of biology and I personally know multiple doctors. I am more bored than frustrated.

i truly hope you never have to experience cancer treatments for a loved one where the treatments end up not working in the end. it is humbling and eye opening.

"find and destroy rogue cells" is an attempt to ask the right question. Sometimes, when stuck, questions from ignorance are useful even if it is just as inspiration.

My ignorance has a model like: If you keep putting sugar in the gas tank, how do you fix the car? How do I stay healthy if I eat only crap? How do I stay fit if I never get out of my chair?

Shit, would it be one of those cause and effect things?

Where did I say "just model with supercomputers"? Thats the biology problem it is super hard!

I am literally saying that avoiding the hard problem is going to work in the general case. I would argue that radiation therapy is in this vein.

> . I would argue that radiation therapy is in this vein.

Why?

I mean I kind of get it: if the problem is tumours, just "laser" all the tumours out and problem solved right?

Which feels like it should be true for a sufficiently targetable "laser" right?

Metastatic cancer is defined by essentially there being too many things to hit though, but therein lies the entire detail: you can't treat someone faster than they die of either the cancer or the treatment.

*Laser is being used metaphorically

> if the problem is tumours

Google paraneoplastic syndromes. Cancer is rarely a problem of just tumors.

> just "laser" all the tumours out and problem solved right?

No. The tumors don't just evaporate. The treatment causes tissue necrosis. Your laser causes inflammation. Even the high tech IMRT you're picturing has those problems.

>Metastatic cancer is defined by essentially there being too many things to hit though,

Metastasis as a concept is fairly meaningless in how you're using it. There are so many more factors in treatment of various cancers that have nothing to do with the distribution. There's a lot that clinpath looks at and frankly I care much more about what's on those reports than playing where's Waldo with nodules. Frequently we assume micrometastasis just based on the cell line or other characteristics.

> therein lies the entire detail

So no.

> you can't treat someone faster than they die of either the cancer or the treatment.

Again far more consideration goes into it but I'm losing my desire to debate these contrived simplistic takes.

I dont get it. The first hit there says it is a rare disorder due to cancer; so this is already not the more common case. Second it is still due to the presence although not local of the tumor. If you destroy the tumor you may have a chance of resolving the condition.

I am aware of necrosis. You need to either completely break down the cell or remove the material. Radiation of course does not do this but surgery of course does.

My appeal to you would be to allow more disruption in this space. Software and Hardware are (mostly) unregulated which allowed for the explosion of progress.

Paraneoplastic syndromes are not rare buddy.

> My appeal to you would be to allow more disruption in this space

No. There is far too much disruption that we don't want/need. If you want to help, go put yourself through medical school first, and then bring your CS knowledge to supplement it.

Jumping in when you haven't learned the basics wastes everyone's time like you have here.

But you have not actually been able to point out the basics that I am missing. You mention a specific condition which is listed as rare via a google search [0]. This condition is also caused by tumors so again perhaps a subset of these cases are completely resolved just by destroying the cells.

The fact of the matter is that I think any kind of refutation is actually pretty difficult for you (perhaps due to the medical training). It likely would have been easier had you just agreed and said "Yes if you can destroy the cancer cells you can treat >90% of all cancer."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507890/

Tell you what, if you're bored and want to learn about this world, I recommend newcomers read Robert Weinberg, The Biology of Cancer, (2nd Edition): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0815342195

I'm assuming you realize that the cancer community has been inundated by people from other domains for decades, right? If only those cancer researchers could think of this one idea that'd solve everything. And yet, somehow it persists.

I think you’ve misjudged the culture here

Well more just the specific audience. A physician is basically the inverse of a hacker.

Yes. There are regimented silos within medicine that allow hacking in ways that attempt to minimize patient harm. Attempting to circumvent them is a good way to land in court.

Despite the name it isn’t so much a hacker culture here but rather a general intelligentsia one

Terence Howard has some platonic solids for you.

The information you can get from light miscroscope images is quite limited though.

On the other hand, maybe it would be enough to filter out every cell that is not identified as a blood cell. This should be an easier task.

Probably we could direct only a small part of blood into this filtering machine at a time. Sounds like it would be still more like a machine detecting if there are cancer cells present in the bloodsteam rather than a machine eliminating metastasization.

I think the "cure cancer without biology" approach makes somewhat sense (I assume you would still need some biology :) ). Don't many surgeries already fall into this category? Let's say we made an automated colonoscopic machine that scanned the whole intestine and destroyed all abnormal colonic crypts. Now if this machine worked well, you would essentially cure at least those colon cancers that go through some aberrant crypt stage.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/793/

How did I miss this xkcd until now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com