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You know, philanthropists really need to invest in higher level free education for non-CS sciences. We have tons of free resources with tremendously beautiful a

You know, philanthropists really need to invest in higher level free education for non-CS sciences. We have tons of free resources with tremendously beautiful animations on data structures and state-of-the-art machine learning, but the same can't be said for bio and chemistry. This is holding back the biotech industry. People can't make educated judgements about stuff like Mercury Thiomersal because that level of organic chemistry understanding isn't covered well by existing resources like Khan Academy. Hacker News and Silicon Valley loves disruption and "Move fast break things" Uber-style. How about democratising medical education? The cheapest, fastest way to improve healthcare in developing countries is to break the whole "apprenticeship" gatekeeping system that plague medicine and pharmacy. There is no FDA in Africa to bring down the hammer on you making videos on low-cost quality control for orphan drug analogues when people are dying due to corruption, incompetence, and poor medical practices. The level of biochemistry knowledge on HN is amazingly poor, every thread on CRISPR and gene drives reads like the infamous parable of the blind men and an elephant.

harimau777 7y ago
I would love that! I'm researching materials for a project I'm working on so I've been reading a lot of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I've noticed that there appears to be a set of known building blocks that chemists use to build solutions. Something like: - "Molecule bits" (rings, chains, functional groups, esters, etc.) that have known properties - Common processes for modifying/changing those bits (alkylation, calcination, ether cleavage, etc.) - A set of standard chemicals (alcohols, acids, solvents, emulsifiers, etc.) For example I often read things like: "In order to give a polymer higher temperature tolerance, chemists often add a benzine ring by calcinating the molecule using acetone."[1] While I'm sure that a professional chemist needs to be able to handle lots of edge cases, it seems to me that a lay person could get a lot of milage out of learning these standard building blocks. I'm going to have to look and see if I can find a good resource that explains them. [1] Note: All of this sentence is completely made up, I just intend it as an example.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  That "good resource that explains them" would probably be an organic chemistry textbook.
shagie 7y ago
Chasing links from the article's author... the category pharma 101: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/pharma-101 https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/phar... https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/09/22/a_free_online_medchem_course https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/09/22/a_... - A Free Online Med-Chem Course The course appears to now be at https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery
perl4ever 7y ago
Is thimerosal or biotech connected to the post you are responding to in some way?
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
>People can't make educated judgements about stuff like Mercury Thiomersal because [...] // Removing Thiomersal from vaccines didn't reduce ASD diagnoses. That seemed to be sufficient for me to form a judgement on it. But, AIUI it's not used in vaccines in the UK now anyway.

harimau777 7y ago

I would love that! I'm researching materials for a project I'm working on so I've been reading a lot of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I've noticed that there appears to be a set of known building blocks that chemists use to build solutions. Something like: - "Molecule bits" (rings, chains, functional groups, esters, etc.) that have known properties - Common processes for modifying/changing those bits (alkylation, calcination, ether cleavage, etc.) - A set of standard chemicals (alcohols, acids, solvents, emulsifiers, etc.) For example I often read things like: "In order to give a polymer higher temperature tolerance, chemists often add a benzine ring by calcinating the molecule using acetone."[1] While I'm sure that a professional chemist needs to be able to handle lots of edge cases, it seems to me that a lay person could get a lot of milage out of learning these standard building blocks. I'm going to have to look and see if I can find a good resource that explains them. [1] Note: All of this sentence is completely made up, I just intend it as an example.

whatshisface 7y ago
That "good resource that explains them" would probably be an organic chemistry textbook.

shagie 7y ago

Chasing links from the article's author... the category pharma 101: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/pharma-101 https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/phar... https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/09/22/a_free_online_medchem_course https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/09/22/a_... - A Free Online Med-Chem Course The course appears to now be at https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery

perl4ever 7y ago

Is thimerosal or biotech connected to the post you are responding to in some way?

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

>People can't make educated judgements about stuff like Mercury Thiomersal because [...] // Removing Thiomersal from vaccines didn't reduce ASD diagnoses. That seemed to be sufficient for me to form a judgement on it. But, AIUI it's not used in vaccines in the UK now anyway.