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Sorry to hear about your friend. Here's a joke: Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine. Seriously though, "bio hacks" are no differ

Sorry to hear about your friend. Here's a joke: Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine. Seriously though, "bio hacks" are no different. If these things worked, it's very likely they'd just be normal practiced oncology. Oncology isn't a subfield of medicine where researchers are overly cautious about risks. The patient is practically guaranteed to die, so even if your research has a chance of killing the patient, that's an improvement. It is far more likely that whatever shallow reading of the medical data you bring to the table is going to counterproductive than productive. I strongly suggest not meddling.

taxicabjesus 2y ago
The author of this Ask HN is asking because conventional cancer medicine is not good enough. I think cancer dissidents say the screening programs for early treatment makes the doctors look better by increasing the number of non-fatal cases that are “diagnosed”. But most people who die after a certain age all have non-fatal tumors in their bodies… > Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine Medicine that doesn’t work is grandfathered in to be called Medicine to. I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use. I mentioned your joke in a comment on a submission about stents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14722748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14722748
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  > I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use. So naturally, you've assumed they don't get retired? I assure you, they do: sometimes it takes longer than it should, but if there's evidence that a treatment is harmful, it eventually does fall out of practice. Very few leeches are used in medicine today, in case you haven't noticed. The ProPublica story you linked was published in 2017, so I'm not hearing that this problem of treatment 8 years ago is still a problem today. It also doesn't make clear what evidence it has against stents. I found some studies from 2003/2004 that say they found insufficient evidence for stents preventing "mortality, acute myocardial infarction, or coronary artery bypass surgery". However, there was evidence for "substantial reductions in angiographic restenosis rates and the subsequent need for repeated PTCA". Now setting aside the pause for a second. Don't look this up: do you even know what "angiographic restenosis" is? If not, why would you think you're qualified to have an opinion on this? Because you read an article in ProPublica, you think you're a cardiologist now? And here's my big picture point: yes, you can find problems with the medical field. Doctors are humans, and they make mistakes. But the track record of doctors as compared to random quackery off the internet, is absolutely stellar. You're criticizing medicine without comparing it to anything. Some of your criticisms are valid areas we could improve on, but the alternative you're offering is much, much worse. People die from under-studied treatments all the time.
d--b 2y ago
I'm not looking for alternative medicine, I'm looking for things that haven't been approved for general use yet.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  "Things that haven't been approved for general use yet" is not meaningfully different from alternative medicine. You've adopted the aesthetic of cyberpunk instead of crystals or tarot or whatever, but let's be clear: you're not approaching this any more scientifically. Do you know how many kinds of brain cancer there are? Are you aware that different kinds of brain cancers work differently and require different treatments? The fact that you're asking for "bio hacks" for brain cancer without even mentioning what kind of brain cancer it is, shows you don't know enough of the background information to even ask the right question, let alone assess the answers. This is like, asking "How do I fix a car problem?" without specifying what the problem is. Specialization exists in our society for a reason. Let the oncologists do their job. I get it, you're smart and you want to help. I'm smart too, and as smart people we can muddle our way through a lot of lower-complexity specializations without actually being a specialist. But I'm telling you medicine, especially oncology, is not one of those things. People a lot smarter and a lot more knowledgeable than us have been trying to cure brain cancer for a very long time and the fact that it isn't cured shows it's not something you and I can muddle our way through with a conversation on Hacker News. It's far more likely that whatever harebrained idea you come up with will hasten your friend's death or increase their suffering before they die, than that it will improve anything. I mean, among the things you're considering is infecting your friend with Zika virus. For fucks sake.
  - d--b 2y ago
    The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that… I don’t deny that smart people are trying to cure cancer. And I don’t pretend to be above them. My point mostly is that I am reading about promising technology in the medical literature that is not through the clinical trials yet. So it is not available to the general public. What I know is that the current available treatments are generally not working well. I don’t think my friend will last more than 6 months. So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation. As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet. Regarding Zika, yes it looks like it could work. You may not be able to do this at scale. I don’t have a clue. But if it was me, I’d book my flight to Brazil on the day of the diagnosis. A lot of people got Zika, the world didn’t end. I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-are-volunteering-to-be-infected-with-diseases https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-...

taxicabjesus 2y ago

The author of this Ask HN is asking because conventional cancer medicine is not good enough. I think cancer dissidents say the screening programs for early treatment makes the doctors look better by increasing the number of non-fatal cases that are “diagnosed”. But most people who die after a certain age all have non-fatal tumors in their bodies… > Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works? A: Medicine Medicine that doesn’t work is grandfathered in to be called Medicine to. I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use. I mentioned your joke in a comment on a submission about stents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14722748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14722748

kerkeslager 2y ago
> I don’t know how standard harmful treatments get retired from active use. So naturally, you've assumed they don't get retired? I assure you, they do: sometimes it takes longer than it should, but if there's evidence that a treatment is harmful, it eventually does fall out of practice. Very few leeches are used in medicine today, in case you haven't noticed. The ProPublica story you linked was published in 2017, so I'm not hearing that this problem of treatment 8 years ago is still a problem today. It also doesn't make clear what evidence it has against stents. I found some studies from 2003/2004 that say they found insufficient evidence for stents preventing "mortality, acute myocardial infarction, or coronary artery bypass surgery". However, there was evidence for "substantial reductions in angiographic restenosis rates and the subsequent need for repeated PTCA". Now setting aside the pause for a second. Don't look this up: do you even know what "angiographic restenosis" is? If not, why would you think you're qualified to have an opinion on this? Because you read an article in ProPublica, you think you're a cardiologist now? And here's my big picture point: yes, you can find problems with the medical field. Doctors are humans, and they make mistakes. But the track record of doctors as compared to random quackery off the internet, is absolutely stellar. You're criticizing medicine without comparing it to anything. Some of your criticisms are valid areas we could improve on, but the alternative you're offering is much, much worse. People die from under-studied treatments all the time.

d--b 2y ago

I'm not looking for alternative medicine, I'm looking for things that haven't been approved for general use yet.

kerkeslager 2y ago
"Things that haven't been approved for general use yet" is not meaningfully different from alternative medicine. You've adopted the aesthetic of cyberpunk instead of crystals or tarot or whatever, but let's be clear: you're not approaching this any more scientifically. Do you know how many kinds of brain cancer there are? Are you aware that different kinds of brain cancers work differently and require different treatments? The fact that you're asking for "bio hacks" for brain cancer without even mentioning what kind of brain cancer it is, shows you don't know enough of the background information to even ask the right question, let alone assess the answers. This is like, asking "How do I fix a car problem?" without specifying what the problem is. Specialization exists in our society for a reason. Let the oncologists do their job. I get it, you're smart and you want to help. I'm smart too, and as smart people we can muddle our way through a lot of lower-complexity specializations without actually being a specialist. But I'm telling you medicine, especially oncology, is not one of those things. People a lot smarter and a lot more knowledgeable than us have been trying to cure brain cancer for a very long time and the fact that it isn't cured shows it's not something you and I can muddle our way through with a conversation on Hacker News. It's far more likely that whatever harebrained idea you come up with will hasten your friend's death or increase their suffering before they die, than that it will improve anything. I mean, among the things you're considering is infecting your friend with Zika virus. For fucks sake.
- d--b 2y ago
  The text below the title says stage 4 GBM, that is the specific form of brain cancer. So that’s that… I don’t deny that smart people are trying to cure cancer. And I don’t pretend to be above them. My point mostly is that I am reading about promising technology in the medical literature that is not through the clinical trials yet. So it is not available to the general public. What I know is that the current available treatments are generally not working well. I don’t think my friend will last more than 6 months. So what I am asking the community is: has anyone DIYed any of the promising technology and obtained any results. Seems fairly reasonable in a life and death situation. As a matter of fact, someone who has GBM has indeed done just that (see in the thread). Unfortunately his experiment just started, so I can’t know if it worked for him or not yet. Regarding Zika, yes it looks like it could work. You may not be able to do this at scale. I don’t have a clue. But if it was me, I’d book my flight to Brazil on the day of the diagnosis. A lot of people got Zika, the world didn’t end. I don’t understand why people can’t stomach the Zika idea. A ton of medical research involves infecting people with live viruses. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-are-volunteering-to-be-infected-with-diseases https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240823-why-some-people-...