4 ms·

I guess I get where you're trying to go with that statement, but you're wrong. Both of those afflictions cross socioeconomic boundaries. And the science behind

I guess I get where you're trying to go with that statement, but you're wrong. Both of those afflictions cross socioeconomic boundaries. And the science behind each, while certainly exploited for it's obvious economic benefit, is nothing to laugh at. Talk to a patient with alopecia universalis (total baldness across entire epidermis, including eyelashes, etc.) or primary venogenic impotence (inability to get erection from birth due to leakage of veins in erectile tissue). These people would never see treatments due to the rarity of these clinical indications if there weren't more widespread need for such medications in less severe cases (male pattern baldness and ED, respectively). And there are literally hundreds of rare (orphan) indications and millions of patients, collectively, that may never see effective treatments. Solving the huge data problems that Facebook is working on (and to our benefit, open-sourcing in some cases) will allow future services to do incredible things. Achieving such scale and becoming not just a "social network," but a nearly integral part of society, is pretty astounding.

dschobel 15y ago
That the afflictions cross economic boundaries is obvious, but how about access to those treatments? The fact that pharma companies pursue these issues vs some more life-threatening is a pure profit calculation based on those with the means to pay for them. But don't get me wrong, I'm a dyed in the wool free-market man so I have no issue with them applying their resources however they see fit, but let's dispense with the fake moralizing and pretending that they have some great motive beyond what will be the next cash-cow drug. My argument all along is that the residual benefits in either case (medical or internet tech) is a fundamentally good thing and that the author is misguided in his criticism and misses the fact that it happens across all industries, some where the stakes are even higher (such as in the pharma example).
- temphn 15y ago
  The issue is that society thinks it's ok to charge $50k for a fancy car but not for a lifesaving treatment. In the former situation you have a choice, in the latter you have no choice.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Mmm, but that has unfortunate second-order effects. Why was so much effort expended on Viagra instead of a cure for AIDS? Well the elephant in the corner of the room is that drug companies need to make money to fund more research; people will buy Viagra but as soon as a cure for AIDS is discovered the governments of India and Brazil will set about mass-manufacturing it without a penny to the discoverer. Knowing this, even if they wanted to do it for the good of humanity drug companies couldn't - they'd be busted for failing their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders!
    - mindcrime 15y ago
      Why was so much effort expended on Viagra instead of a cure for AIDS? Viagra wasn't created for the purpose of treating ED, it was originally meant as a treatment for high blood pressure and angina[1]. The fact that it caused erections just caused Pfizer to shift to marketing it as an ED treatment. So it's not like they were spending tons of research money specifically to "help old men have erections." Knowing this, even if they wanted to do it for the good of humanity drug companies couldn't - they'd be busted for failing their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders! Not necessarily true. Drug companies have worked on cures for diseases that are prevalent in the 3rd world, and they have even - on occasion - intentionally distributed that cure for free, to people who couldn't afford it. [2] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil [2]: http://www.mectizan.org/history http://www.mectizan.org/history
- possibilistic 15y ago
  Whoa, hold on... I think medicine and biotech are misunderstood here. First of all, Big Pharma != Academia or biotech startups. The former group concentrates on profitability and marketable drugs, whereas the latter two do the heavy lifting for a broad spectrum of diseases. Secondly (and more importantly), we must realize that there are two issues at hand: the ease of developing an effective drug to combat a particular disease state, and the predominance of a given disease in the general population. Big Pharma already claimed the "low hanging" fruit decades ago. Many of today's medical problems require a systems engineering methodology to approach them as the pathways and metabolomics are just too incredibly complicated to yield direct solutions. The search spaces are vast, multidimensional, and tedious. To make matters worse, it's really difficult to commit to studying an orphan disease. A solution to a particular type of cancer, Alzheimer's, or HIV would have wide applicability and save many lives. Finding a solution to a rare genetic disorder, however, may help only a few thousand individuals. It's incredibly sad that there is such suffering from rare diseases, but we have so little mental capital to invest in fixing these problems. At present, biotech and medicine is nothing like programming where iteration and debugging yield fast results. Years of personal labor can become pointless if mistakes are made. I don't know if it's justified for me to feel this way, but I wish more of the brilliant minds in programming would switch to a biotech/research profession. Computing is such a well-traversed and developed field and solution space. While it isn't glamorous, medicine and biotech really need you...
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    My take is that it's just too early in biotech. Back in 1973 it was certainly possible to envision Facebook and Twitter. For example, if you read Steven Levy's Hackers you'll learn about the Community Memory project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Memory But computers and their associated tech like telecom were so expensive in 1973 that Community Memory was impractical at scale. There was no Facebook around to offer Lee Felsenstein an enormous salary and a potential IPO. The infrastructure wasn't yet built out, the audience wasn't yet there, and investor consciousness had not yet been raised. It took another twenty years of development to get from that point to the Web, and then another decade or so to get to Facebook. Biotech is still stuck in the equivalent of 1973. We've identified many of the processes that need to become cheaper and more ubiquitous in order to conduct biotech research in your basement, but the tools are still large, expensive, and tedious to use. So at this point if you go into biotech you'll either spend 12 hours a day pipetting liquids by hand, waiting for the PCR machine, and pasting your data into Excel for analysis, or you'll spend 12 hours a day raising money to pay for the pipettes, the PCR machine, and the other scientists who are running them. I've spent years as a biotech postdoc, and I've spent years as a programmer, and it's no mystery to me why people would rather be programmers, and would rather hire programmers. The day-to-day work is more pleasant, and the results have got such evident and immediate value that you can get good pay for them with relatively little effort or risk. Plus, you're part of a really big and freewheeling global culture, not only of web users but of web programmers.

dschobel 15y ago

That the afflictions cross economic boundaries is obvious, but how about access to those treatments? The fact that pharma companies pursue these issues vs some more life-threatening is a pure profit calculation based on those with the means to pay for them. But don't get me wrong, I'm a dyed in the wool free-market man so I have no issue with them applying their resources however they see fit, but let's dispense with the fake moralizing and pretending that they have some great motive beyond what will be the next cash-cow drug. My argument all along is that the residual benefits in either case (medical or internet tech) is a fundamentally good thing and that the author is misguided in his criticism and misses the fact that it happens across all industries, some where the stakes are even higher (such as in the pharma example).

temphn 15y ago
The issue is that society thinks it's ok to charge $50k for a fancy car but not for a lifesaving treatment. In the former situation you have a choice, in the latter you have no choice.
- gaius 15y ago
  Mmm, but that has unfortunate second-order effects. Why was so much effort expended on Viagra instead of a cure for AIDS? Well the elephant in the corner of the room is that drug companies need to make money to fund more research; people will buy Viagra but as soon as a cure for AIDS is discovered the governments of India and Brazil will set about mass-manufacturing it without a penny to the discoverer. Knowing this, even if they wanted to do it for the good of humanity drug companies couldn't - they'd be busted for failing their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders!
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    Why was so much effort expended on Viagra instead of a cure for AIDS? Viagra wasn't created for the purpose of treating ED, it was originally meant as a treatment for high blood pressure and angina[1]. The fact that it caused erections just caused Pfizer to shift to marketing it as an ED treatment. So it's not like they were spending tons of research money specifically to "help old men have erections." Knowing this, even if they wanted to do it for the good of humanity drug companies couldn't - they'd be busted for failing their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders! Not necessarily true. Drug companies have worked on cures for diseases that are prevalent in the 3rd world, and they have even - on occasion - intentionally distributed that cure for free, to people who couldn't afford it. [2] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil [2]: http://www.mectizan.org/history http://www.mectizan.org/history
possibilistic 15y ago
Whoa, hold on... I think medicine and biotech are misunderstood here. First of all, Big Pharma != Academia or biotech startups. The former group concentrates on profitability and marketable drugs, whereas the latter two do the heavy lifting for a broad spectrum of diseases. Secondly (and more importantly), we must realize that there are two issues at hand: the ease of developing an effective drug to combat a particular disease state, and the predominance of a given disease in the general population. Big Pharma already claimed the "low hanging" fruit decades ago. Many of today's medical problems require a systems engineering methodology to approach them as the pathways and metabolomics are just too incredibly complicated to yield direct solutions. The search spaces are vast, multidimensional, and tedious. To make matters worse, it's really difficult to commit to studying an orphan disease. A solution to a particular type of cancer, Alzheimer's, or HIV would have wide applicability and save many lives. Finding a solution to a rare genetic disorder, however, may help only a few thousand individuals. It's incredibly sad that there is such suffering from rare diseases, but we have so little mental capital to invest in fixing these problems. At present, biotech and medicine is nothing like programming where iteration and debugging yield fast results. Years of personal labor can become pointless if mistakes are made. I don't know if it's justified for me to feel this way, but I wish more of the brilliant minds in programming would switch to a biotech/research profession. Computing is such a well-traversed and developed field and solution space. While it isn't glamorous, medicine and biotech really need you...
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  My take is that it's just too early in biotech. Back in 1973 it was certainly possible to envision Facebook and Twitter. For example, if you read Steven Levy's Hackers you'll learn about the Community Memory project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Memory But computers and their associated tech like telecom were so expensive in 1973 that Community Memory was impractical at scale. There was no Facebook around to offer Lee Felsenstein an enormous salary and a potential IPO. The infrastructure wasn't yet built out, the audience wasn't yet there, and investor consciousness had not yet been raised. It took another twenty years of development to get from that point to the Web, and then another decade or so to get to Facebook. Biotech is still stuck in the equivalent of 1973. We've identified many of the processes that need to become cheaper and more ubiquitous in order to conduct biotech research in your basement, but the tools are still large, expensive, and tedious to use. So at this point if you go into biotech you'll either spend 12 hours a day pipetting liquids by hand, waiting for the PCR machine, and pasting your data into Excel for analysis, or you'll spend 12 hours a day raising money to pay for the pipettes, the PCR machine, and the other scientists who are running them. I've spent years as a biotech postdoc, and I've spent years as a programmer, and it's no mystery to me why people would rather be programmers, and would rather hire programmers. The day-to-day work is more pleasant, and the results have got such evident and immediate value that you can get good pay for them with relatively little effort or risk. Plus, you're part of a really big and freewheeling global culture, not only of web users but of web programmers.