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First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists
- bix6 2mo agoReally tired of hearing how much better China is than us. It’s just so demoralizing like what is going on…
- pudgywalsh 2mo agoIf this were the US, you'd be claiming this recklessness is what happens when you fire all the oversight at the FDA. Fortunately for China they have the luxury of killing people, pretending it never happened, and replacing them from its never-ending pipeline.
- econ 2mo agoYour use of "Printing" before the edit had me wonder. Rapidly growing population under a one child policy? Comparable to India? How?
- pudgywalsh 2mo agoHN readers often struggle to overlook minor effectual literary details but miss the bottom line: China's population is sufficient that no one will notice a few scientists missing. Definitely not beyond their borders. They'll make sure of it. If this experiment was unsuccessful we'd never know about it and everyone involved would be incinerated. I don't think you could pull that off in India, population or not. For all their corruption I want to believe they frown on disappearing people if anything for religious reasons.
- GPerson 2mo agoDon’t you think it hurts your case to exaggerate that China is going around incinerating scientists?
- pudgywalsh 2mo ago[flagged]
- GPerson 2mo agoProve to me there’s no tea-cup in outer space orbiting the sun.
- wellitsmehere 2mo agoThe only country for which there is a certainty it kills other countries scientists, is not China.
- EA-3167 2mo agoA good way to cut through competing accounts and noise to find "where do people want to live more?" is to look at net migration flows.
- cyanydeez 2mo agoSo scientists are all leaving for europe and billionaires are all moving to texas and ... is this what you mean?
- EA-3167 2mo agoAll of the scientists! Oh my. No I didn't mean anything quite that fanciful, I'm referring to net migration between China and the US. Are more people leaving the US for China, or are more people leaving China for the US? It's a crude measurement, but it beats online doomerism.
- cyanydeez 2mo agoChina is working to do this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03657-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03657-6 They are definitely getting immigrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China High quality scientists leaving UK and US: https://www.nationpress.com/sciencetech/10-scientists-quit-us-uk-for-china-2026 https://www.nationpress.com/sciencetech/10-scientists-quit-u... You'll need to clarify what you value about the immigration arguement.
- EA-3167 2mo agoI've already been very clear, you simply seem unable or unwilling to read the word "net" in my posts. I appreciate that China is doing many exciting things and happily unlike many in both China and the US I don't see human progress as a zero sum game either. None of that changes what I said however, or the reality of net migration between China and the US.
- 2mo ago
- dudisubekti 2mo ago> demoralizing Why? China could do their own thing, and your country can do yours.
- forestrywat 2mo agoThe US is clearly on a path to crumbling infrastructure, waste, inefficiency, and corruption. Seeing that other countries seem to be doing some actual thinking about the future is demoralizing when you cannot get your leaders to care.
- bdangubic 2mo agoelect people that care
- oblio 2mo agoTheir democratic system is completely broken at the moment. 1. Fixed number of Senate spots, regardless of State population. 2. First past the post voting everywhere leading to 2 party system. 3. Broken electoral college voting system for presidential elections. 4. Legalized gerrymandering. 5. Legalized bribes, sorry lobbying. Their democratic system is stuck in the 1870s and they can't reform it. And on top of that they have outsized corporate political power. It's really hard even for masses of determined inviduals to reform anything.
- pudgywalsh 2mo agoI don't think you understand anything about how the American government works.
- oblio 2mo agoI've read and seen more about it than I should have, as a non-American that's never going to live in the US. Press cycles in smaller countries are inundated with US news. There is probably a lot I don't know so please ask and I'll do my best to explain my knowledge on the topic to the best of my abilities.
- forestrywat 2mo agoWe could, like, stop framing it as us vs them to start. We could also elect leaders who want progress and are willing to squeeze the 1% even a little bit to make that progress. China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment. The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts. I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.
- virgil_disgr4ce 2mo agoChina is an authoritarian regime that brutally punishes dissidents. Just throwing this out there because apparently everyone seems to have forgotten this.
- forestrywat 2mo agoSo is the US, to be honest.
- isatty 2mo agoNot even close to the same level as China. What’s up with whitewashing China on all online platforms these days? You, on hacker news, should know better.
- virgil_disgr4ce 2mo agoYeah I'm wondering the same thing. It's bizarre and unsettling and seems off-brand for HN.
- Sabinus 2mo agoThe left is having it's Tea Party/MAGA movement, it's only going to get worse for the foreseeable future.
- mrtksn 2mo agoYou can seek comfort by looking at some GDP numbers and compare GDP numbers and AI benchmarks with EU I guess :) Kidding aside, it is very normal for a huge populous country to dominate once they get their shit together. Europeans mostly made peace with the fact that they no longer have empires, Turks and Brits a bit less so I guess but you will be fine. US is a great country, expect China be greater simply because of its sheer size. Time to make peace with the fact that the exceptional situation was a phase, not an inherent result of the superiority of the people.
- oblio 2mo agoTo add to that. Those magical 50s and 60s? Basically the entire industrial base in Eurasia had been destroyed during WW2. Unsurprisingly the only unscathed industrialized country in the world entered an unprecedented boom. Assuming that everyone else would revert to the Stone Age forever was unrealistic.
- mrtksn 2mo agoExactly. All the best scientists, engineers and ambitious people went to USA and entire industrial bases were uprooted and moved to USA. US did the Marshal plan but all this happen because the rest of the world was busy destroying each other. Now USA destroys itself, EU trying to find its soul and unite at the same time. China? China is reaping the rewards of its decades of hard work. Honestly, apart from big ego guys who make things hard, I think the world is actually set to a new united phase. The issues are %100 local, apart from climate change I guess.
- anon291 2mo agoI mean it's not a direct competition. America excels in many regards and China excels in many regards.
- vardalab 2mo agoYes, but we still have a leed in freedom according to the lore from our fearless leadership.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoThey’re going to run away with it. We have true regressives in power at this point staunchly defending fossil fuels and diminishing the main advantage the US had with attracting the best and brightest from all over the world. This was the worst possible to have MAGA take over. That being said, I would still definitely want to live in the US compared to China.
- dave_sid 2mo agoDonald?
- bothers 2mo ago>like what is going on… USGOV disemboweled itself, telling its citizens that they'd be better off without all those gross innards. Womp womp, no do-overs on the global stage, sorry.
- snapplebobapple 2mo agoWe got too cautious. They may be too incautious but possibly not given how excessively cautious we are. Caution is good but it needs to be accurately costed and where it cant be we need to error on the side of incaution because the cost of caution is often atleast as high as the cost of incaution
- phs318u 2mo agoAs a non-USian but a fan of your republic’s ideals, I understand. I feel incredibly saddened at the slow-motion self-immolation that seems to be consuming your country. I read this article yesterday and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I had to double check it wasn’t a gag. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/donald-trump-us-navy-fighter-launching-system-aircraft-carriers/107040154 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/donald-trump-us-navy-... It’s not necessarily that China is “better”, but they clearly have an intentionality to the directions they are pursuing. Sadly, it seems so does the US.
- _DeadFred_ 2mo agoSo much better https://www.google.com/search?q=china+execution+van https://www.google.com/search?q=china+execution+van
- scheme271 2mo agoWasn't there just a post a few days ago about how Chinese researchers ignored a bunch of ethical and safety guidelines to run some of this research and ended up killing a girl? The article just brushes aside that incident and seems to assume that because China is doing this experimentation, it's ahead in regards to gene therapy targeting the brain.
- fakedang 2mo agoThe article mentions that incident and links to it too.
- HedonicEscal8r 2mo ago"Multiple controlled trials" is quite different from an under-the-table, privately funded bespoke therapy for a single patient.
- insane_dreamer 2mo agofrom the article: > Several people died recently in early-stage gene therapy trials in China.
- superkuh 2mo agoThis headline is burying the lede. My response to someone using genetically altered retroviruses to genetically engineer cells in the CNS of living humans would be stunned silence too. That's quite a risk to get past a review board. The big question seems to be, how specific is the targeting of these designer retroviruses to the desired cell types and tissues and how is that achieved?
- readthenotes1 2mo agoYou said it's burying the lede but the "stun" is right there in the headline. I'm confused what you think the lede for this story should be?
- superkuh 2mo agoIt is currently about designer proteins. But the designer proteins are not the "stunning" aspect of this. Using genetically engineered retroviruses to genetically engineer brain tissues in living humans is. It would be stunning even without any novel proteins being involved.
- mjevans 2mo agoFor all the theories about how covid might have been some conspiracy in China... (I'm more inclined to believe a hybrid, they didn't have a program to develop any weapons out of it, but would EASILY buy a coverup to try to hide the shame of yet another seasonal virus that turned out to be more) What if this sort of research leads to some prion like disease that either works like a slow acting (fast to spread) neuro-toxin, or a scenario like the Children of Men movie? Containment and risks need to be considered.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoAnother possible answer to the Fermi paradox.
- readthenotes1 2mo agoDon't we have fauci's journal notes saying that he thought it was lab made now?
- bigbadfeline 2mo agoSpeculation about "who's done it" is seriously counterproductive - bio-events are awfully easy to engineer for misdirection. The most concerning part of this story isn't that there's nothing to prevent any of these or worse, it's the push to paint bio-concerns as a ridiculous caricature. Especially in the light of international bio-treaties being a bad joke and the suppression of protective bio-information by the big AI labs.
- whozdat 2mo ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 2mo agoChina literally is committing a slow genocide with the Uighurs. They put all their men in jail and assigned all their women to Han Chinese men. This is happening right now.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoGood. Let’s get a move on on these things. If people die it’s no big deal if they volunteer for it and know the risks before they sign up for it.
- jancsika 2mo ago> If people die it’s no big deal if they volunteer for it and know the risks before they sign up for it. Similarly, letting pilots skip the security check is no big deal. Just check the id_hash of their _pilot_struct against the ids in the day's flight manifest for the current frame being evaluated in the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality. If people are really that worried about "exploits" they're free to set a save point before arriving to the airport that morning. Edit: important clarification wrt the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
- whozdat 2mo ago[flagged]
- tiahura 2mo agoHow absurd to think that covid was a gof leak.
- turtleyacht 2mo agogain-of-function
- readthenotes1 2mo agoThe US government would never fund a Chinese lab to do something like that, right?
- Sabinus 2mo agoIf that was the case why would the Chinese cover it up?