I mean the actual medicine part. When I think about it, there are still no cures for the major things that ail us (e.g. cancer, etc.). China cured that one guy from his diabetes, but I haven’t heard anything beyond that.
The “promise” of stem cell technology from 20 years ago still hasn’t amounted to anything that your average person can get (and there are all sorts of shady overseas places that give ppl “stem cell” injections, but honestly we should have figured out that shit by now).
If you tear a ligament/tendon, guess what, that shit will never heal back to 100%, and the “oh just rest and do physical therapy” shit is annoying because you’re only really working around the problem and not solving it.
On top of that, as you get older it’s harder for your body to heal from injuries, sickness, etc. and I’ve yet to see any legit progress on anti-aging. If your heart is damaged or arteries clogged, I don’t see any way to reverse it.
And after covid, it’s all been fucked. How many people have long covid and the medical establishment just throws it’s hands up 
basically treating an entire segment of the population as though it was a bad crop yield ("I guess there’s always the next batch!!).
And doctors themselves are often the biggest dipshits out there. They are high off their own supply because they’re “smart” and lack the empathy to actually listen to patients. Either they’re older conservative types or younger lib dipshits. And there are so many horror stories about nurses that talk shit about patients. It’s just dismal.
The common reply is that “biology is hard” but honestly that’s a WEAK excuse. So many advances were made in the past, and there are so many more to be made. An actual concerted international effort, unhindered by profit motives and fucking insurance, hospital, pharmaceutical industries, etc. would almost certainly yield results. I mean look at Cuba coming up with a lung cancer vaccine and curing HIV in an infant. Look at China curing diabetes in that one guy. These advances are possible, but honestly they aren’t coming fast enough. If you’re suffering from a terrible disease/ailment, the “promise” of a new drug that still may be 10 years away is just terrible.
So even if we had 100% socialism now with free healthcare, there are still so many things that need to be addressed. I can’t help but think that had the Soviet Union not fallen, we would have had cures for many things. Hopefully 
can do something about this, but overall I’m still super bummed that the future we dreamed has not materialized.
I met an older student at uni who said she used to be in biotech, but quit and went back to school because, as she described it “I’m still in NDA, so I can’t say too much, but let’s just say we produced a lot of things that could have saved lives but the company would shelve it because it wasn’t profitable to sell things that worked too well. I couldn’t do it anymore, it was too depressing, so here I am.”
The day our turn comes I hope all my disabled comrades get to open the treasure troves of all the miracles of modern science that have been relegated to sealed archives because they’d hurt a pharmaceutical company’s bottom line. I hope they get to do that with a gun in their hands.
A beautiful dream
You’re so right. I completely forgot about that one Goldman Sachs report that worried about people getting “one short cures” because it would hurt the profit motive (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/). Fuck…
It’s quite depressing to think about, sorry
Here’s hoping thats less of a problem in socialist countries.
And every one of those shelved inventions is patented so nobody else can fucking use them
they’re not even patented. these companies won’t patent discoveries if they don’t think they need to. if you patent something, the whole world becomes aware of it. they jusy store it as an internal memo report and it’s eventually forgotten
Wow, I can’t believe capitalism has made me a finite being necessarily constrained to a particular time and place.
Yeah this reminds me of some of the Cushvlogs, Matt
would sometimes go into how a lot of people on the left get driven to wild places because they can’t handle the idea that they might not be there to see history unfold.
I’ma be real with you chief, this ain’t it
My mom got some special stem cell plus chemo shit that put her brain cancer in remission and now she’s basically fine so that was pretty cool
My dad got that. It worked, his brain cancer went into remission, but then he died of legionnaires when he was immuno compromised, because G4S who did the hospital maintenance decided it was too costly to fix the water system. Legionaries had been an ongoing issue in that hospital for over a decade but we can’t upset the shareholders can we. This is an NHS hospital too.
Fuck privitization
Yeah the immunotherapy that is used in cancer (and some autoimmune conditions) in the last few years is pretty crazy in how effective it is.
“there is no cure for cancer?l”
which one of the over 200 distinct diseases that we call cancer are you referring to?
Who exactly are you quoting?
paraphrasing you. third sentence.
Ok so you’re really trying to be a
here, right? You know what I mean, everyone knows what I mean. If a friend were to tell me “hey I got the flu I can’t make it” I wouldn’t respond by saying “well, ackshually, what specific strain of the thousands of strains of viruses we call ‘the flu’ are you talking about???” With all due respect, GTFO with your concern trolling. I’m not gonna respond further to you.everyone knows exactly what you mean. You’re wondering why there isn’t a cure for everything yet. And then you’re saying that the soviet union would have figured everything out.s
And a cancer is not a different strain of the same virus. Two different cancers are two unrelated diseases with a common symptom.
Yeah but this is what people say to dismiss socialism/communism. “It’s too complex, human nature, etc. etc.”
Sure but lots of things are “hard.” Or “complex.” That’s what zionists say about Israel (“oh it’s soooo complex!”) when we know for damn sure it’s not.
You keep trotting this out but it’s a ridiculous (and frustrating) comparison. People (libs/chuds) will often say “starving millions of people is bad” to “dismiss communism.” It doesn’t mean that the opposite is true and that “starving millions of people” is actually good. Those who say that it is bad are right. It is bad. It just doesn’t apply to the Soviet Union or communism but it does apply to other circumstances (like Churchill’s evil, racist, and fully intentional genocidal policies causing four million people to starve to death during the Bengal “famine” in 1943). Just because people use a truism to sometimes criticize a thing unjustifiably, that doesn’t mean the truism is false. Some things actually are inherent human nature, it’s just that market competition isn’t one of them. Some things actually are complex, it’s just that the Isntreal-Palestine conflict isn’t one of them. Etc.
I can’t believe I’m reading this here and I’m not convinced you aren’t a troll. Modern medicine is a fucking miracle of human accomplishment, and while it’s not cured us of death or the human condition, and despite how much it is disgustingly hampered and distorted by capitalism, we are profoundly lucky to live in an age where so many of the conditions that have caused untold human suffering and death for the entire existence of our species are now nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I for one, without question, would not be alive without “modern medicine.”
You keep trotting this out but it’s a ridiculous (and frustrating) comparison.
Yeah that’s your opinion. It seems quite apt to me. People, including leftists, thought Palestinian liberation was doomed, but the Oct. 7 happened. No one predicted the Russian Revolution (i.e. the whole “years happen in weeks” thing). You might not like the comparison, but again that’s what YOU think. Others think quite differently.
It just doesn’t apply to the Soviet Union or communism but it does apply to other circumstances
Ok so “thing I think is right” is applicable, but “thing I think is wrong” is not applicable. Cool.
. I could say the same thing about my position.Some things actually are complex, it’s just that the Isntreal-Palestine conflict isn’t one of them. Etc.
Yeah and the ppl who think so are wrong, and I agree with you. But YOU could be wrong about the degree of “complexity” of the human body as well.
I for one, without question, would not be alive without “modern medicine.”
Yeah, probably most of us. But that doesn’t invalidate anything that I said in my post. Anyways it’s clear no one will be “right” until a breakthrough/revolution either happens or doesn’t happen. So that’s all I guess.
So your entire argument comes down to “there’s no such thing as consensus reality, it’s all just like your opinion, man!” Got it, you are deeply unserious.
But YOU could be wrong about the degree of “complexity” of the human body as well.
lol. Ok, troll.
But that doesn’t invalidate anything that I said in my post.
But that’s just your opinion. MY opinion is that it literally did invalidate everything you said in your post, and opinion is the only thing that is real or matters, remember.
I think it’s best to disengage.
I kinda see what OP is saying and empathize a little bit. I mean it really is how you view it I guess.
I can’t believe I’m reading this here and I’m not convinced you aren’t a troll.
Also, it seems like both your accounts are about the same age.
lol. Ok, troll.
Ok now you’re wrecker-jacketing. Gonna report this.
Ok, well if you’re going to go to bat for a troll who baits serious discussion with takes like “biological complexity is nothing more than opinion,” who is literally saying that those who point out the fact that biology is complex are like Zionists calling their settler-colonial apartheid state complex, and use my account age to somehow equivocate us, then why don’t you also compare what comes up for our usernames in the modlog? Then, I don’t know, maybe consider reporting yourself for abuse of the report function?
“I am being lied to about how complicated human biology is” is up there with the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, come on lol. It is not “how you view it”. None of this information is hidden, all of it is out there.
Also, it seems like both your accounts are about the same age.
Imagine being on this website and not deleting your account every few months.
The common reply is that “biology is hard” but honestly that’s a WEAK excuse.
lol
It’s true
Speaking from experience, this has the same energy as the clueless boss of an IT department setting absurd deadlines and feature requirements because they don’t understand what is and isn’t actually computationally feasible
Speaking from experience, this is the same energy as the clueless boss of an IT department setting absurd deadlines and feature requirements because they don’t understand what is and isn’t actually computationally feasible
And yet many here, perhaps even you, want Xi to press the
for communism, so I don’t see the hostility towards dreaming of actually achieving something instead of being a downer about it.No investigation, no right to speak.
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Why are you so belligerent?
It isn’t. There’s a good book you might enjoy called The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell, who is well known for doing really great illustrations of cell-level stuff. It will give you an appreciation for how fucking complicated it is. Idk I know people whose entire existences are subsumed in studying a single molecule and they don’t even understand everything that it does.
Sure but lots of things are “hard.” Or “complex.” That’s what zionists say about Israel (“oh it’s soooo complex!”) when we know for damn sure it’s not. So I dunno, I guess I just disagree with you on that one I guess.
Zionists lie about how complicated it is to neuter critique from liberal nuance-fetishists. That has nothing to do with how complicated human biology is. Like, just google “Roche biochemical pathways wall chart”.
I don’t know, I kinda agree with OP. Every time something seems impossible there’s always a breakthrough. Why should we believe it would be any different for this?
Medical research stands on the shoulders of giants. Do you think these breakthroughs just happen randomly or when it’s convenient? People pour their lives into advancing a small amount of our shared knowledge, and will never see recognition or thanks.
I am so confused by what is getting upvoted here, you people have no experience in medicine or research.
No investigation, no right to speak.
I am so confused by what is getting upvoted here, you people have no experience in medicine or research.
It’s just a bunch of people angry at the world upvoting what they would like to hear over the truth of the matter/situation. Seems to be an ever increasing theme on hexbear, I think people want to even ban “doomerism” now, whatever that means.
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Medical research stands on the shoulders of giants. Do you think these breakthroughs just happen randomly or when it’s convenient?
Yes, they do stand on the shoulders of giants. AND, the breakthroughs often, perhaps usually, overturn the current “consensus” of the day, and often those breakthroughs are mocked by the current establishment consensus (there are plenty of examples on this, e.g. doctors legit thought that washing your hands before surgery didn’t matter, physicists used to believe in the eternal/steady state model of the universe, physicists thought that physics was basically “done” and then the quantum revolution happened). So I don’t know what you’re talking about.
No investigation, no right to speak.
This might actually be you, but who am I to say
.
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And that one’s so out of date that they took the original source website down as they’re in the process of overhauling it! https://biochemical-pathways.com/
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I guess I’m just gonna have to
disagree
The human body is simultaneously the most complex chemical plant ever created, the most advanced piece of machinery and the greatest computational device in existence. It’s a miracle that we understand how a quarter of it works.
You’re being an incredible dick in these comments holy shit
I mean I know you don’t want to hear this, but it is hard and incredibly complex. “Curing cancer” would be basically the same as curing thousands of diseases simultaneously, you’d need a different cure for each type of cancer and how it effects different cells. Biomechanics are complicated with ligaments, tendons, bones and soft tissue. For instance, the best surgery we have at the moment for severe scoliosis or kyphosis (someone’s spine growing skew in various different ways) still boils down to taking most of the affected vertebrae (often around a dozen vertebrae), and fusing them all together into one big bone/vertebrae that’s straightened out, with what amounts to permanent braces that never get removed (metal screws and rods) that hold the vertebrae in place while they form into one big bone. Yes, that’s how it’s “fixed”, by losing most of the mobility in your spine.
I mean I know you don’t want to hear this, but it is hard and incredibly complex.
Yeah but this is what people say to dismiss socialism/communism. “It’s too complex, human nature, etc. etc.”
“Curing cancer” would be basically the same as curing thousands of diseases simultaneously, you’d need a different cure for each type of cancer and how it effects different cells.
Sure but the one thing that unites all cancer cells is uncontrolled cell division. And your body’s immune system is constantly killing rogue cancer cells here and there, but sometimes they slip through (usually due to age-related immune decline). So I could see a therapy that attacks it from that angle. So I really don’t buy the whole “cancer is ackshually a bajillion different types of diseases!” thing honestly.
Biomechanics are complicated with ligaments, tendons, bones and soft tissue.
I see stem cells playing a huge role in these kinds of things. I’ve been seeing legit research on the use of mesenchymal stem cells in pretty much healing these kinds of things.
Basically all the concerns you’re talking about could have been said about a whole slew of things that seemed “incurable” 100-200 years ago but are a piece of cake now.
Isn’t that just almost magical thinking, to think we can prevent uncontrolled cell division or immune system decline from age, from ever happening in the first place with our current technology? That’s why a lot of experts think the most realistic approach at this point in time to treat cancer is treating each type of cancer differently. If the alternative to “not buying that theory” is to try find a magic bullet cure to stop all uncontrolled cell division and aging, that’s most likely going to take a lot longer to come to fruition than targeting different types of cancers on an individual basis.
Didn’t you also say that “The “promise” of stem cell technology from 20 years ago still hasn’t amounted to anything that your average person can get”, and now you’re suggesting that stem cell therapy can heal tendon, ligament, bone, and soft tissue injuries. That’s a really wide range of injuries. I surely hope that is true, but logically I can’t see how that could be.
Didn’t you also say that “The “promise” of stem cell technology from 20 years ago still hasn’t amounted to anything that your average person can get”, and now you’re suggesting that stem cell therapy can heal tendon, ligament, bone, and soft tissue injuries.
If I’m reading OP charitably, I think they mean that in our current system, it hasn’t amount to anything due to profit motives, etc. but that it isn’t inherently wrong to think that stem cells can work.
Your takes on healthcare are equivalent of people mad that Xi hasn’t pushed the communism button
It does suck that things are moving slowly. There has been good news. Like Hepatitis C is completely curable. Hepatitis B is pretty close to being outright cured and can be controlled by antivirals like HIV (affects millions in the global south). HIV is preventable via PREP and completely controllable with medication with very little side effects that stop you from spreading it. HIV vaccines are probably going to be in our lifetimes.
There’s a lot of discussion about Ozempic, but GLP-1 agonists (and a different class sglt2 inhibitors) are huge breakthroughs not just for diabetes, but for heart disease, renal disease and a bunch of other conditions. It sucks that capitalists are rolling out the near miracle medications and focusing on the wrong thing (like exclusively weight loss), but they’re a crazy breakthrough in our lifetime.
But I definitely agree if the Soviet Union was around we’d have better stuff, from collaboration rather than competition.
Hopefully more breakthroughs are on the way!
in addition to capitalism and imperialist wars holding society back, technology is not like a linear video game progression, everything is subject to the law of diminishing returns. we have already made all (or most) of the easy discoveries, most that are left are very difficult or impossible or particularly power/resource-intensive. some stuff might just be exceptionally inimical to our current thought paradigms and material conditions though. for example Rome probably could have built steam engines, they knew of the technology from toy/model examples from greece, and they eventually had better metallurgy, but slaves were overall cheaper and more important to the economy and in fact rome enacted laws against certain kinds of labor saving devices/factory designs (yes they had slave-powered factories in ancient rome) to protect the economic position of slavery. it will be even more crucial to efficiently organize production and resource allocation the ‘farther along’ we go. unlikely we could ever build a dyson swarm etc. if we are wasting resources on imperialist wars and long-term-inefficient economic scams and total environmental destruction.
in addition to capitalism and imperialist wars holding society back, technology is not like a linear video game progression, everything is subject to the law of diminishing returns.
Yeah but hasn’t the history of scientific progress shown that every time we think we’re at a stagnation point, a breakthrough discovery is made that shatters the old paradigm?
Yes, because countless numbers of people make it their life’s work to advance our knowledge, and their work would be impossible without the discoveries of the people before them.
Cause you can’t fix structural breaks, like ligament tears, with drugs. Best you can hope for is put it in good position, and maybe eat something promoting repairs.
Also, anti-aging always got tons of money (guess why), and billionaires seems to live to like 90+. I have very significant doubts it will advance much though, it will have to be something like you take it before 20 or some shit and it works (so we’ll see in like 50 years)
Cause you can’t fix structural breaks, like ligament tears, with drugs.
I didn’t say it had to be cured by drugs, but something that promotes the repair back to 100%, be it stem cells or whatever, cuz even after a surgery that shit never heals back to 100%.
Also, anti-aging always got tons of money (guess why), and billionaires seems to live to like 90+. I have very significant doubts it will advance much though
Yeah but it would be nice if we all got it too. Why must we suffer from the ill effects of aging but they don’t get to? To me it’s a matter of equity.
Ligaments are hard, even miracle stem cells could decide to multiply wrongly, so you’ll have to do like 24/7 mri to be completely sure. They already try with stem cells, with inconsistent results I believe for athletes. It sort of hard problem is my point. drugs are much more annoying cause they are cheap, some designer physiotherapy with stem cells injections is 1-3 people on the clock doing stuff for one person for two months, it’s not feasible that way, just due to labor, best we can hope for is injections will show it’s usefulness, slap on a bum and a new type of slings.
For billionaires, It’s more like they don’t do shit, and sit in well ventilated filtrated air for most of life.
I’ve been seeing good research on mesenchymal stem cells (not embryonic or other types).
But basically, anytime I hear someone say “this is too hard” I just think all the times that had been said throughout history (“humans will never achieve powered flight” or “humans will never break the sound barrier” or “humans will never achieve escape velocity to go into space”) so yeah I guess yeah…
My point was, drugs are obvious point of disgusting ip laws, it’s good to push on them cause it’s cheapest most obvious effect. If you say tomorrow ip laws on drugs are gone and I lose my acl I would take it. something like widely available physiotherapy is for more relaxed society which has more time for people in general, instead of 50 hours a week worked in usa.
Stem cell injections have helped my mom with her blood cancer.
I can assure you that biological science is progressing at an ever increasing exponential rate
Also there will never be “a cure for cancer” because there are many different cancers with many different causes, it’s like expecting a one pill cure for every disease
I wasn’t expecting that before but now I am. Thanks Obama.
actually it was Biden who literally said word for word that if elected we’d cure cancer
You can’t blame Biden for anything he’s said or done, he had a stutter.
I feel slightly angry with you punching on the people working in healthcare that actually provide the care.
Nurses, but also doctors are working nonstop to keep the patients and also the system running as good as possible within the constraints that they’re given. They cannot afford the time to try and change the broader political environment in which they have to operate. Doing so would cost lives. I’m not American, but German and I know a few doctors personally. They’re pretty decent and even very left leaning people. The shit, human misery caused by a broken system, privatization/monetization of healthcare they have to deal with necessitates a certain dark humor, fatalism or cynicism to just stay sane enough to continue doing it. We as a society have failed to address this problem - the conditions that we put on them - and their only option is to develop a defense mechanism. You may not like it, but this defense mechanism against all this shit is better than the alternative - them all giving up and quitting. At least short time. Maybe the only way to fix it would be a mass walk-off/strike that actually causes a lot of deaths for us (society) to actually wake up and fix it. Unfortunately the majority only has to experience health care in exceptional circumstances. Otherwise it’s pretty invisible to us. We only know about the overworked nurse or the uninterested uncaring doctor. We don’t know the rest of the story - all the other patients they have to deal with at the same time. The bad news that they have to bring and the angry responses they get a thousandfold from unlucky patients, the treatment they have to deny because of asshole CEOs of insurance firms and the politicians who enable them (that we as a society don’t remove with some pitchforks). We only see the end product of a person that has been molded by this broken system and we get angry at them. But they are not the problem. Doctors don’t start their job wanting to be this cynic version of them. That’s just the shit they have to deal, because we as a society don’t help them that makes them so.
And yes they get tons of money and all that (the doctors), but I’m not convinced that they get to enjoy it that much.
I’ll push back a bit on doctors being left-leaning. In every country that has tried to socialize healthcare, doctors have organized and aligned against it. Here’s an article about it: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/29/18265530/medicare-canada-saskatchewan-doctor-strike
If you want to learn more about the formation of Canada’s single-payer healthcare system and how it was influenced by the Soviet model, there’s a good book called Radical Medicine.
I was only talking about the doctors that I know personally. I wasn’t making a point about all doctors. I’m pretty sure they’re not that representative. I’m not sure why I brought it up, as it doesn’t have any statistical weight. I was just trying to give a perspective from the other side. Not all doctors are like that monolithic group of uncaring assholes that OP puts them in. Even if they might appear that way. It’s simply the external constraints that make it necessary for them to act that way. Most doctors don’t choose their profession, because they want to make tons of money and can be mean to desperate people. They’re idealistic and their dream turns into a nightmare - because of unhinged capitalism. With lots of other jobs - bullshit jobs - it’s easy to quit. But as a doctor quitting would mean throwing many years of very hard work around the clock away AND have an immense negative impact upon the patients most desperate for help (and also leaving your colleges (friends?) with even more work). If I’m stopping to be an Uber driver because it doesn’t make me unhappy nobody would get hurt. The societal impact of that would be: “who gives a shit?”
So they are much less likely to quit and have a strong incentive to keep living in that hell. They might not appear to be the nicest people.
I know a lot of doctors too. The point is how people behave & present themselves has little to do with how they actually behave when their material conditions are on the line.
