4 ms·

One of a Kind (2014)

20 points by EndXA 3y ago

user_7832 3y ago
I’m grateful to whoever posted this. Unfortunately it appears that Bertrand passed away in 2020 from septic shock, but he was able to develop much better after his diagnosis. There’s more information at https://bertrand.might.net/ https://bertrand.might.net/ for anyone curious.
- EndXA 3y ago
  I had no idea about this when I posted. Thank you for sharing.
low_tech_love 3y ago
Oh, wow, this is the son of Matt Might from The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D…! What a story. https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
- herodoturtle 3y ago
  Thanks for this. And I see in the page you linked he even references his son’s condition.
novia 3y ago
> It helps that both the Mights and the Wilseys have family money. (Matt Might’s father is the president and C.E.O. of Cable One, the cable-television division of the former Washington Post Company.) Since 2012, the Mights have devoted more than a hundred thousand dollars a year to NGLY1-related research in Hudson Freeze’s lab, while the Wilseys have spent two million dollars funding researchers around the world. My knee-jerk cold-hearted reaction to this was that, while it's great that the parents of the children with the rare disease were able to get some answers about their children's condition, this sounds like a vanity project for some very rich people. Which other secrets of the human genome might we have unlocked if the money hadn't incentivized these specialists to spend time investigating down this one alleyway? Like, there's a limited amount of people in the world who study biology at this level and incentivizing them to do research in one area necessarily means that another area will be sacrificed while they do the work. Then I self corrected. There's not a limit of people interested in researching things like this. There's a limit of funding. Any additional funding towards researching genetic diseases allows more specialists to enter the field.

20 points by EndXA 3y ago

I’m grateful to whoever posted this. Unfortunately it appears that Bertrand passed away in 2020 from septic shock, but he was able to develop much better after his diagnosis. There’s more information at https://bertrand.might.net/ https://bertrand.might.net/ for anyone curious.

EndXA 3y ago
I had no idea about this when I posted. Thank you for sharing.

low_tech_love 3y ago

Oh, wow, this is the son of Matt Might from The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D…! What a story. https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

herodoturtle 3y ago
Thanks for this. And I see in the page you linked he even references his son’s condition.

novia 3y ago

> It helps that both the Mights and the Wilseys have family money. (Matt Might’s father is the president and C.E.O. of Cable One, the cable-television division of the former Washington Post Company.) Since 2012, the Mights have devoted more than a hundred thousand dollars a year to NGLY1-related research in Hudson Freeze’s lab, while the Wilseys have spent two million dollars funding researchers around the world. My knee-jerk cold-hearted reaction to this was that, while it's great that the parents of the children with the rare disease were able to get some answers about their children's condition, this sounds like a vanity project for some very rich people. Which other secrets of the human genome might we have unlocked if the money hadn't incentivized these specialists to spend time investigating down this one alleyway? Like, there's a limited amount of people in the world who study biology at this level and incentivizing them to do research in one area necessarily means that another area will be sacrificed while they do the work. Then I self corrected. There's not a limit of people interested in researching things like this. There's a limit of funding. Any additional funding towards researching genetic diseases allows more specialists to enter the field.