4 ms·

This sounds pretty harmless. Any idea how they got a bad adverse event out of it?

ethbr0 6y ago
Imagine a 4 billion year old codebase, written by dice throws and unit testing. The immune system is a "complicated" thing to work with.
- Daynil 6y ago
  I'm going to print this out and frame it.
  - qchris 6y ago
    Yeah, I just wrote this down to remember for later. What a quote.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Repressed humour from the programmer son of a pathologist. My favorite dad quip was 'Biology itself is proof against an intelligent designer.'
      - xlm1717 6y ago
        Biology is too "complicated" for our intelligence at least.
        ethbr0 6y ago
        His point was more along the lines of it being poorly designed. Evolution isn't going to nicely separate functionality into clean, single-purpose biochemical pathways. It's going to overload something that it already has to support a new feature, leading to a rat's nest of intertwined effects. The hard part in drug development isn't affecting your target: that's pretty easy to guarantee with modern tools. It's finding out that that target also governs 10 other, completely unrelated bodily functions.
        landryraccoon 6y ago
        > It's going to overload something that it already has to support a new feature, Some companies in the valley just call that Wednesday.=)
        ethbr0 6y ago
        Absolutely, which gives me a chuckle when people trivialize biology, but run screaming from a (gasp!) 20 year old legacy codebase.
- beowulfey 6y ago
  And it has to work on 7 billion similar but slightly different operating systems
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  > unit testing. Did you mean integration testing?
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Absolutely not. Evolution unit tests, then integrates in prod.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > Imagine a 4 billion year old codebase, written by dice throws and unit testing. That's a great analogy, except it doesn't go quite far enough. The code for the toolchain that compiles the codebase (not to mention the unit testing framework) is just as old, and written the same way.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    Note to self: while the code (including the toolchain code etc.) is in a monorepo, it is actually surprisingly modular. OTOH, much of the functionality was implemented by copy-and-paste of existing code elsewhere in the repo, and the copies then diverged with subsequent modification.
rnet85 6y ago
It sounds harmless because it omits the incredibly complex process of developing immunity. Your body basically is trying to do a sort of brute force/random combination of immune cells on the retrieved virus spike proteins until it comes up with the right combination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation This process can result in B cells that produce antibodies which stick to virus proteins but also stick to your own cells. The B cells are essentially permanent, that’s how you develop lasting immunity, that unfortunately also means you have lasting immunity on one of your own cell types — autoimmunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease
BickNowstrom 6y ago
A 50000 people study is likely to see adverse events completely unrelated to the vaccine. Halting the trial is not a sign that they think it is related either, since it is protocol to rule things out before continuing.

Imagine a 4 billion year old codebase, written by dice throws and unit testing. The immune system is a "complicated" thing to work with.

Daynil 6y ago
I'm going to print this out and frame it.
- qchris 6y ago
  Yeah, I just wrote this down to remember for later. What a quote.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Repressed humour from the programmer son of a pathologist. My favorite dad quip was 'Biology itself is proof against an intelligent designer.'
    - xlm1717 6y ago
      Biology is too "complicated" for our intelligence at least.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        His point was more along the lines of it being poorly designed. Evolution isn't going to nicely separate functionality into clean, single-purpose biochemical pathways. It's going to overload something that it already has to support a new feature, leading to a rat's nest of intertwined effects. The hard part in drug development isn't affecting your target: that's pretty easy to guarantee with modern tools. It's finding out that that target also governs 10 other, completely unrelated bodily functions.
        landryraccoon 6y ago
        > It's going to overload something that it already has to support a new feature, Some companies in the valley just call that Wednesday.=)
        ethbr0 6y ago
        Absolutely, which gives me a chuckle when people trivialize biology, but run screaming from a (gasp!) 20 year old legacy codebase.
beowulfey 6y ago
And it has to work on 7 billion similar but slightly different operating systems
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
> unit testing. Did you mean integration testing?
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Absolutely not. Evolution unit tests, then integrates in prod.
webmaven 6y ago
> Imagine a 4 billion year old codebase, written by dice throws and unit testing. That's a great analogy, except it doesn't go quite far enough. The code for the toolchain that compiles the codebase (not to mention the unit testing framework) is just as old, and written the same way.
- webmaven 6y ago
  Note to self: while the code (including the toolchain code etc.) is in a monorepo, it is actually surprisingly modular. OTOH, much of the functionality was implemented by copy-and-paste of existing code elsewhere in the repo, and the copies then diverged with subsequent modification.

rnet85 6y ago

It sounds harmless because it omits the incredibly complex process of developing immunity. Your body basically is trying to do a sort of brute force/random combination of immune cells on the retrieved virus spike proteins until it comes up with the right combination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation This process can result in B cells that produce antibodies which stick to virus proteins but also stick to your own cells. The B cells are essentially permanent, that’s how you develop lasting immunity, that unfortunately also means you have lasting immunity on one of your own cell types — autoimmunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease

BickNowstrom 6y ago

A 50000 people study is likely to see adverse events completely unrelated to the vaccine. Halting the trial is not a sign that they think it is related either, since it is protocol to rule things out before continuing.