Comment by kerkeslager

Comment by kerkeslager 8 days ago

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Sorry to hear about your friend.

Here's a joke:

Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine.

Seriously though, "bio hacks" are no different. If these things worked, it's very likely they'd just be normal practiced oncology. Oncology isn't a subfield of medicine where researchers are overly cautious about risks. The patient is practically guaranteed to die, so even if your research has a chance of killing the patient, that's an improvement.

It is far more likely that whatever shallow reading of the medical data you bring to the table is going to counterproductive than productive. I strongly suggest not meddling.

taxicabjesus 8 days ago

The author of this Ask HN is asking because conventional cancer medicine is not good enough. I think cancer dissidents say the screening programs for early treatment makes the doctors look better by increasing the number of non-fatal cases that are “diagnosed”. But most people who die after a certain age all have non-fatal tumors in their bodies…

> Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine

Medicine that doesn’t work is grandfathered in to be called Medicine to. I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use.

I mentioned your joke in a comment on a submission about stents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14722748

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  • kerkeslager 6 days ago

    > I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use.

    So naturally, you've assumed they don't get retired? I assure you, they do: sometimes it takes longer than it should, but if there's evidence that a treatment is harmful, it eventually does fall out of practice. Very few leeches are used in medicine today, in case you haven't noticed.

    The ProPublica story you linked was published in 2017, so I'm not hearing that this problem of treatment 8 years ago is still a problem today. It also doesn't make clear what evidence it has against stents. I found some studies from 2003/2004 that say they found insufficient evidence for stents preventing "mortality, acute myocardial infarction, or coronary artery bypass surgery". However, there was evidence for "substantial reductions in angiographic restenosis rates and the subsequent need for repeated PTCA".

    Now setting aside the pause for a second. Don't look this up: do you even know what "angiographic restenosis" is? If not, why would you think you're qualified to have an opinion on this? Because you read an article in ProPublica, you think you're a cardiologist now?

    And here's my big picture point: yes, you can find problems with the medical field. Doctors are humans, and they make mistakes. But the track record of doctors as compared to random quackery off the internet, is absolutely stellar. You're criticizing medicine without comparing it to anything. Some of your criticisms are valid areas we could improve on, but the alternative you're offering is much, much worse. People die from under-studied treatments all the time.

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d--b 8 days ago

I'm not looking for alternative medicine, I'm looking for things that haven't been approved for general use yet.

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  • kerkeslager 6 days ago

    "Things that haven't been approved for general use yet" is not meaningfully different from alternative medicine. You've adopted the aesthetic of cyberpunk instead of crystals or tarot or whatever, but let's be clear: you're not approaching this any more scientifically.

    Do you know how many kinds of brain cancer there are? Are you aware that different kinds of brain cancers work differently and require different treatments? The fact that you're asking for "bio hacks" for brain cancer without even mentioning what kind of brain cancer it is, shows you don't know enough of the background information to even ask the right question, let alone assess the answers. This is like, asking "How do I fix a car problem?" without specifying what the problem is.

    Specialization exists in our society for a reason. Let the oncologists do their job.

    I get it, you're smart and you want to help. I'm smart too, and as smart people we can muddle our way through a lot of lower-complexity specializations without actually being a specialist. But I'm telling you medicine, especially oncology, is not one of those things. People a lot smarter and a lot more knowledgeable than us have been trying to cure brain cancer for a very long time and the fact that it isn't cured shows it's not something you and I can muddle our way through with a conversation on Hacker News. It's far more likely that whatever harebrained idea you come up with will hasten your friend's death or increase their suffering before they die, than that it will improve anything.

    I mean, among the things you're considering is infecting your friend with Zika virus. For fucks sake.

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    • d--b 5 days ago

      The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that…

      I don’t deny that smart people are trying to cure cancer. And I don’t pretend to be above them.

      My point mostly is that I am reading about promising technology in the medical literature that is not through the clinical trials yet. So it is not available to the general public.

      What I know is that the current available treatments are generally not working well. I don’t think my friend will last more than 6 months.

      So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation.

      As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet.

      Regarding Zika, yes it looks like it could work. You may not be able to do this at scale. I don’t have a clue. But if it was me, I’d book my flight to Brazil on the day of the diagnosis. A lot of people got Zika, the world didn’t end.

      I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses.

      https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-...

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      • kerkeslager 4 days ago

        > The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that…

        Which kind of GBM? You're aware there are different kinds, right?

        > So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation.

        > As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet.

        And if his GBM does go into remission, you still won't know if it worked for him.

        In fact, no one has "indeed done just that". No one has obtained any results.

        > I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses.

        I can stomach infecting people with live viruses just fine.

        What I can't stomach, is someone saying shit like: "Meanwhile, it is proven that the Zika virus does kill GBM cells in humans. This is what causes microcephaly in newborns. Inoculating the Zika virus in a controlled environment yields zero risk, and has no side effects."

        Uh, that's not proven, and "zero risk" and "no side effects" is not a thing in medicine. I'm not aware of any treatment for anything that has "zero risk" and "no side effects", let alone some bleeding edge treatment with a virus that has barely been studied as an infection let alone as a treatment cancers. Even the studies you linked did not say what you claim here: that's you literally making shit up. You said that, it's a quote of you, and it was dangerously incorrect.

        I think it's a pretty reasonable rule of thumb that if someone says someothing has "zero risks" and "no side effects", they should be ostracized from medical conversations. You simply do not know what you are talking about and should stop talking about it, because what you are saying endangers anyone who believes you.

        And as I've reiterated a few times now: you do not have cancer, so whatever harebrained grasping at straws you would do if you had cancer is irrelevant. Your friend is the one with cancer, so maybe ask them what they want before inundating them with your irresponsible, unqualified medical advice.

        I am sorry about your friend, I really am. But that's not an excuse for you to spread medical misinformation.

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        • d--b 4 days ago

          You're quite upset. It doesn't help.

          Ok, yes you're right : medical stuff never yields zero risk nor side effects, I should have been more nuanced. And yes, Zika infection probably doesn't cure GBM either. There. Happy?

          Yet, there have been clinical trials where people have voluntarily been inoculated by a live zika virus shot to test if a Zika vaccine was working. So real doctors have done it before, and on people who were not going to die 6 months later.

          See here:

          https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/how-human-challen...

          So you can blame me all you want for suggesting this CrAzY IdEa, but you should also be pissed at those doctors who actually did it in clinical trials.

          From my point of view the situation is:

          1. There is a non-zero probability that the Zika virus aggressively attacks GBM cells, as suggested by a whole bunch of medical literature.

          2. Current treatments are not working well and do induce extremely debilitating side effects.

          3. There have been clinical trials where people have been voluntarily infected with Zika.

          It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that we could try and cure GBM patient by infecting them with a live Zika virus, exactly the same way as we did to test the Zika vaccine.

          But instead doctors say we should follow a protocol that we know doesn't work and is very heavy in terms of side effects. And people just keep dying really fast, without trying anything new.

          It just pisses me off.

          --

          Re: my friend has cancer and not me. Is there anything I wrote that suggests I am forcing anything upon him? I haven't told him anything about the research I am looking into. You're just too angry for some reason...

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