Can’t wait for rich billionaires’ kids to live to be 250 years old while everyone else dies from microplastics-induced early onset Alzheimer’s and childhood cancer from PFAS.
Have you seen the documentary Altered Carbon? It covers this scenario.
Great show. It’s a shame we never ever got another season.
If they ever do a second season, I’d love it if they refrained from trying to shoehorn in any radical changes.
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I think you might not understand what they are joking about. They say there isn’t a second season because they don’t consider the one we have to be a “valid” season, because they think it was bad.
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Was that the one with a japanese guy in a white body that pronounces his own name like an American?
That’s explained by the muscle memory of the sleeve that he’s in. A mouth that has only practiced pronouncing American English will not have the neural pathways to pronounce words in a Japanese way. The consciousness and memories transfer but the sleeve doesn’t change.
It’s a convenient plot device but also it fits the narrative cleanly.
I guess the only reason why that seemed unconvincing to me is that I’m not one of those people who can have someone tell me their name, then immediately pronounce it totally wrong, repeatedly. I grew up believing these people were just straight up being racist and making fun of them. I guess it actually does make sense though. Japanese people are largely incapable of pronouncing anything other than Japanese too. Actually of people I have heard trying to replicate a pronunciation after hearing it, with multiple tries, Japanese people may even be the worst. American English speakers just somehow seem offensive when they can’t do it.
I still feel like if it were me I could have retrained my vocal capabilities to be at least 60% as before in a year at worst though. I can’t imagine not being able to pronounce my own name correctly, especially in the case of japanese in any non japanese body. It’s like “Hi I’m Tah-kesh’ee. I’m absolutely truly not a weeb. I’m actually japanese, I swear. It’s just that I can roll my R’s and differentiate them from L’s. Nah Roo Toes? The little spiral fish discs? I love 'em to bits. Oh you met my brother Die Soo Key? Oh no, you pronounced his name right, I just can’t do it because my body is American.”
Fuck I just reminded myself of the three separate times when I was still in school thay we had homestay students named Daisuke. My parents kept calling him dai suki, pronounced fairly close to how a japanese person would pronounce daisuki. It made me die inside every time I saw their facial expression react. Like a hint of “are they trying to demonstrate the japanese words they learned? What a bizarre choice though” that quickly fades to “oh. They meant my name…”
I love this. The somehow nuanced yet obvious humor that picks up on how extremists call pure facts of fiction documentaries.
I’m going to start calling everything a documentary from now on.
That’s a so boring trope IMO. Like stop inventing insulin, heart transplants and cancer treatments, only the rich will get it!!
What about being a wee bit excited for more and better treatments for the future?
What about being a wee bit excited for more and better treatments for the future?
That’s covered in other threads. Right now we are being depressed by the grim reality that quality Healthcare is quickly becoming out of reach for a lot of Americans, and the Americans who might have access, can’t really afford it anyway.
Because most of the people complaining, I imagine, live in the US.
What do you even mean by this? Those issues are important, but familial hypercholemia also affects 34 million people. A treatment like this would be helpful for people across all classes
I think what they’re getting at is that most people wouldn’t be able to afford this treatment.
This is a problem now, especially in America where people avoid going to the doctor even though they’re pretty sure it’s cancer, but they are out of a job right now and have no idea how they would be able to afford treatment or the time off from work.
The solution could be something else than stopping research maybe?
Universal Healthcare would be a good start.
Well yeah duh
Well that’s a dumb position to take since nearly every technology is only for the rich when it was invented
The argument isn’t to not develop these things, the argument is to not let rich people become immortal while everyone else stays mortal, but spread the good among everyone.
That’s not the argument I was replying to
It’s basically the plot to Altered Carbon. Rich can afford new bodies, poor people can’t so the rich live forever and the poor die young.
Coming to a doctor’s office nowhere near you and nowhere near affordable for the average joe.
“Workers will live longer while still eating the same garbage food as before, meaning we can continue to pay them a pittance”
Boom. It’s on the health plan.
this. folks don’t realize how having a healthier workforce is something overlords want. Its even better than babies because no costly education needed.
Eh. They want a healthier workforce during their prime years. After that they need them to die sooner so that they aren’t a cause for an increase in taxes to support them. We’re about to see that with the Boomers. These old fucks are living forever and the workforce is shrinking, meaning bigger bills with fewer people to tax to pay them.
things like this does that though. We are getting into a wierd situation though were some people break down still in the 50’s and some can keep going into 70’s decently but folks are making it to 90’s.
Food intake has a very modest impact on cholesterol levels in people with familiar hypercholesteremia.
Like 10 % reduction when you are 500 % over safe levels.
Statins are already there on a once a day pill. I don’t know how they are for other people, but I have a nuke-it-from-orbit dosage due to genetic issues, and I don’t notice any side effects. A grapefruit might kill me, but I never liked them, anyway. Costco’s out of pocket rate is around $30 for 90 days.
I’d take gene editing if it were cheap enough, but just speaking for myself, I’m fine without it. Health plans probably aren’t going to make it cheap when the alternative tends to work fine.
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Also said by a guy learning about car phones in the 1970’s
Yeah it sucks for you Americans over there.
Hopefully it will pave the road for lots of other similar treatments and also bring prices under control.
It will bring prices under control for the manufacturers, which will raise their profit margin while they keep the prices sky high.
Also, lets not forget that our paying, or rather our insurance, paying absurd prices for drugs is what has long subsidized the rest of the world’s cheap drugs. It’s why drug companies fight so hard to keep America from lowering drug prices - it’d completely destroy their profit margins and they’d be relegated to being mere multimillionaires instead of multibillionaires.
Euh, it’s because your market is totally deregulated compared to the EU for example. You’re not paying for us, all the non needed benefits go in the pockets of the ultra rich.
Maybe not right now. But that was the case for every medicine or treatment immediately after it was first discovered. When insulin was first discovered as a treatment for diabetes only a few people could get it, for example, now it’s standard.
As somebody who’s been a vegetarian for twenty years but still has 200 LDL at age 37, this would be really great to just have fixed. Dumb genes.
You want something in my genes. Constant dangerously low blood pressure, cholesterol, and heartbeat. I’ve had doctors joke that I need an IV of lard and salt. Oh yeah, I’m also either hyper or hypo glycemic. Whichever one needs to be reset with salt being added in to restart my glycemic regulation.
I basically get to eat whatever I want just to maintain consciousness, and even at 43 my metabolism shows no signs of slowing down.
Downside is that I will pass out if I stand up too fast, and I constantly crave salt.
Damn. I can’t imagine. Hope you and the doctors get it figured out and that you’re having a good day. Hang in there. We’ve barely scratched the surface of gene therapy.
I find it quite funny that CRISPR gene editing sounds, at first glance, no more complicated than genetic modification of e-coli bacteria that I performed in an undergraduate Biochemistry course 20 years ago.
Back then, I just followed a recipe - extract DNA from the bacteria, mix it with a chemical to cut at certain places, add in your desired gene, mix it with a “glue” chemical that joined them together, then just spin your new DNA in a centrifuge with the bacteria and finally grow it all on a medium that your new gene has a resiliance against, such that only the bacteria that absorbed the desired DNA would survive. I’m sure the CRISPR process is much more finessed, but many of the core principles are the same.
I also wonder if cold and other SARS/Covid viruses somehow mix and share genetic material in swirls in the air, like a natural centrifuge.
I mean, I’ve worked with CRISPR in plant biology. It’s not really that much more complicated. It’s just much more effective.
I suppose I shouldn’t really be that surprised. I’m an electrical engineer these days, and one thing I’ve noticed is that most things are all just the same core principles (eg V = I x R) but applied in slightly different ways.
RF circuits are the same core principles filtered through black magic and the Laplace domain.
Reminds me of the similarities between electricity and water flow. Obviously, there are differences, but the metaphor holds up well enough that you can use one to help explain the other.
Restriction enzymes cut at specific sequences, and although there are lots of variations, this limits where the new material can be inserted. CRISPR can match an arbitrary sequence, so there is much more control over where changes are made.
Yes, although it’s not completely arbitrary as you need a PAM sequence to be present right where you want to cut the DNA. It’s quite small though so chances are, you’ll find one in a convenient location
Close, the centrifugal effect comes from children spinning around on playgrounds before passing the newly minted viruses back into the world.
This one is apparently a better version of CRISPR, which is more targeted. Traditional CRISPR breaks DNA and expects your body to do the fixup, which increases cancer risk. This one is more targeted and safer.
there is a youtube video of a guy making a virus to cure his lactose intolerance which comes from the crisper process. Process is pretty much the same.
What if there’s a benefit to high cholesterol?
I feel like if we know enough to fix this with gene editing on purpose, we know enough to unfix it on purpose too. If we later run into a situation as a species where having high cholesterol is somehow a major improvement for people, we can give everyone high cholesterol pretty easily.
My doctor has been telling me for 15 years my good cholesterol is too low. But nothing she recommended had any affect until I started taking a statin.
I have heard intermittent fasting helps a lot with stubborn health issues. Might be worth trying out.
I have a similar “issue”. Good total cholesterol around 150, but too low of a ratio between good and bad cholesterol.
If there is, the problem is that the effect of high cholesterol would outweigh it. Unless you enjoy heart attacks and strokes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a small initial test in people, researchers have shown that a single infusion of a novel gene-editing treatment can reduce cholesterol, the fatty substance that clogs and hardens arteries over time.
This places a very heavy treatment burden on patients, providers, and the health care system,” said Andrew Bellinger, chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics, at a news conference over the weekend.
In a study published in the journal Circulation earlier this year, researchers from the company showed that the approach lowered bad cholesterol 49 to 69 percent in monkeys, depending on the dosage they received.
While the participants already had severe coronary artery disease, and some had previously experienced a heart attack, the company aims to eventually treat younger patients in order to prevent these outcomes.
Sanjay Rajagopalan, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls the results a “very exciting” proof of concept.
But Rajagopalan, who wasn’t involved in the Verve study, says the main concern about any Crispr-based approach is the potential for off-target effects, in which unwanted cells or genes would unintentionally be edited.
The original article contains 730 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And the end of base line humanity begins.
