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The human body: metabolism -> cell damage -> pathology -> death. Medical Science intervenes in between pathology and death. It's kind of unreasonable to have
by metamemetics 16y ago
The human body:
metabolism -> cell damage -> pathology -> death.
Medical Science intervenes in between pathology and death. It's kind of unreasonable to have high expectations for medical science given it's so late in the chain. A better solution is to reduce the rate at which metabolism causes cellular damage. There are only 7 different errors of metabolism leading to damage:
cellular loss/atrophy, death resistant cells, nuclear mutations and epimutations, mtDNA mutations, protein crosslinks, junk accumulating inside cells, and junk accumulating outside cells.
Instead of wasting money on bad correlation studies, address those 7 things and we'd be lightyears ahead in terms of helping people. Instead of dumping all research money into attacking manifestation-of-cellular-damage pathology foo, we should invest in basic scientific research giving us a more rigorous definition of cell biology.
- rflrob 16y agoI think we can and should be investing in both. Or rather, in the whole spectrum between basic science and direct medical research. The kinds of systems that make a good biology paper are still pretty abstracted from anything directly applicable, so its good to know that the science still gives you the right result on real people.
- wazoox 16y agoMedical research is mostly paid by the pharma industry; this industry as a whole is NOT interested in preventing people from getting ill, for obvious reasons. Another nice example of market failure :)
- ars 16y agoThat's not true. If they could find something to prevent people from getting ill it would probably be the biggest seller ever, and given that they are not God there will probably always be ill people, even if they prevented some illnesses. The don't do it because they don't know how, not because of any sort of conspiracy.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThe pharma industry would not want to find a preventative pill that they can sell to 300 million healthy people instead of 500,000 sick people? That doesn't make a lot of sense. (Incidentally, the #1 and #3 drugs are preventative, not curative. http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/prescription-drug-sales http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/prescription-drug-s.... )
- limist 16y agoFixed link: http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/prescription-drug-sales.htm http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/prescription-drug-s... Are Lipitor and Plavix truly preventative? Aren't they prescribed when there are already issues with cholesterol and the heart?
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThanks for the fix. You take Lipitor/Plavix when you are at risk of certain blood flow related diseases (heart attack, stroke). The goal is to prevent these diseases or delay their onset in people with an elevated risk. Isn't that what we mean by preventative? Vaccines probably also fall into this category. They are more widely used, although not exactly moneymakers [1]. [1] They used to be a small, positive revenue stream. Drug companies are trying to get out of the business now, due to fear of lawsuits by Jenny McCarthy and her ilk.
- limist 16y agoHummm, I think "preventative" for me means focusing on causes. Such drugs may act on symptoms (I don't know how effective they are, wouldn't surprise me in light of this article if they are not, esp. considering side-effects), but would not IMO be in the same class of preventative measures as exercising regularly, sleeping well, eating well, socializing regularly, de-stressing, etc. - all of which act "upstream" on our overall health levels. In other words, if you eat fast food, watch TV for hours each day, don't exercise, work too much and sleep too little, then develop bad numbers on your blood tests, taking a drug to improve those numbers a bit shouldn't be considered preventative.