In more familiar terms, it’s less than one M&M. But enough M&Ms make you fat.
The key thing to understand about that statistic is that it’s false
Mostly saying the general idea that biomedical research quality would suddenly evaporate if federal government was more highly involved seems suspect given the federal government is already creating the worlds gold standard biomedical researchers through NIH funding programs.
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I don’t have a lot of insight. The presumptive treatment to cure malaria would be a vaccine and the company I work for doesn’t have a vaccine business so I don’t have any insider knowledge about how that works. I’m anyway not a medical guy, I’m an IT middle management who understands most aspects of the business and industry. From what I can read, being infected with malaria doesn’t give much immunity to reinfection, so maybe it is really hard to develop a vaccine in the traditional way by understanding how to prime the immune system against the virus. Any of the medical doctors in the forum would have a better answer to that than I could offer.
I do think there would be profit and prestige in malaria cure and the industry would develop a vaccine if there was research showing something as a plausibly viable candidate. There may not be much money in developing an incrementally better treatment than we have today. The industry does plenty of work on antivirals that might help treat malaria but wouldn’t be malaria specific and might be absent from the stats.
- Malaria isnt a virus.
Now. I don’t have a problem with you being incredibly uninformed on Malaria. Most of us are incredibly uninformed on most topics.
I do have a concern about you assuming the answer and going “well if there was a chance of progress private industry would be doing it”
The lack of Malaria R&D is a travesty, an obvious misallocation of resources and something that is killing millions of kids.
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I thought about mentioning that, but I didn’t because he didn’t actually say that, but instead mentioned “antivirals that might help treat malaria”.
In some technical sense, that’s not impossible. It could be a possible that a compound that is generally used as an antiviral could, coincidentally, be active against the parasite that causes malaria. This wouldn’t be that weird. For example doxycycline is generally considered an antibacterial agent, but it has activity against malaria which is caused by a parasite.
And I’m sure we all remember, ivermectin (an antiparasitic agent) being tried against COVID, because there was some evidence to suggest that it may have some antiviral effects as well. It didn’t pan out, but it was plausible. And if that’s plausible, then the reverse is as well.
Yeah the first thing that popped into my head regarding malaria was Cholorquine, an outdated malaria treatment being used against COVID, which put me on the wrong path. As I said I’m not a medical guy
So I read a little more and GSK did develop a vaccine. It’s only 30% effective. It’s not going to be a cure or really a more effective thing than DEET and mosquito nets. They’re not withholding it from anyone due to price but there are manufacturing capacity issues. They will produce 18 million doses to be distributed from 2023-2025 in partnership with the WHO. I guess you could argue they should do more and invest billions in new manufacturing facilities that will bring them no revenue but to me that’s beyond the scope of what a company like GSK should be asked to do.
Grandpa McTrollson had lifelong issues with malaria after WWII. Lived to an old age but still had occasional serious relapses. Pretty gnarly disease.
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If it has a major health upside with little downside, I dont see why not. We dont generally question BP med or statins, so why this?
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M&Ms make you fat?!?!?
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Because (unlike these other conditions) fat is usually visible and is generally considered less attractive, so I’m considering a future where a lot of people are using this that don’t actually have health problems due to weight. Like every influencer on the planet selling this to young kids as the solution to their body image problems or something
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You get that’s the point right? Like you are here right in black and white saying that we can’t expect private companies to invest in saving lives over profitability…
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He did. Further up the post. But again. That’s not the concern.
[Double posting this idea/rant from fitness thread because I think this thread gets a lot more views and it strikes me as an appropriate LC thread.]
Went down a rabbit hole on PubMed regarding the benefits of exercise for type 2 diabetes. The results are, of course, significant, such that doctors should probably be doing everything in their power to force type-2 diabetics to exercise regularly. It’s more effective than just about any medicine that can be prescribed. (I’m all in favor of medicines, but exercise is the miracle drug for many diseases).
While I’m not going to cite a bunch of stuff, this readable 2018 academic review article, “Health Benefits of Exercise” Health Benefits of Exercise - PMC discusses regular exercise as a treatment/benfit for over 40 chronic health conditions.
The full article is linked, but the abstract states that:
Overwhelming evidence exists that lifelong exercise is associated with a longer health span, delaying the onset of 40 chronic conditions/diseases. What is beginning to be learned is the molecular mechanisms by which exercise sustains and improves quality of life. The current review begins with two short considerations. The first short presentation concerns the effects of endurance exercise training on cardiovascular fitness, and how it relates to improved health outcomes. The second short section contemplates emerging molecular connections from endurance training to mental health. Finally, approximately half of the remaining review concentrates on the relationships between type 2 diabetes, mitochondria, and endurance training. It is now clear that physical training is complex biology, invoking polygenic interactions within cells, tissues/organs, systems, with remarkable cross talk occurring among the former list.
This leads me to believe that the most significant public health challenge facing modern medicine is how to get more people to exercise regularly by making regular exercise (where you sweat) more fun, convenient, cheaper, common, etc.
In theory exercise could be mandated by law, but that would be both unconstitutional and philosophically problematic, but the government, employers, and doctors have many “nudges” available to them. For example, the government could make exercise more common by, eg, offering Obamacare subsidies for exercise, or by opening free exercise facilities with trainers in every city with over like 50k people (as a trial) and maybe even give people like $10 for each 1-hr exercise session (just need “Obamaphone” fitness trackers), there could be a 1-hr mandated exercise break per 8-hours worked for sedentary jobs. These are just random ideas, some drastic and unrealistic, but there should be public discussion of 100s of possible ways to make exercise much more common, with significant inducements.
We hear that we are moving toward a service economy and AI will take a bunch of jobs. Well, how about putting a million people to work as physical trainers? It’d probably be cost-efficient and, from a utilitarian perspective, about the best dollar-for-dollar social intervention available. Hell, it would probably also promote productivity (more energy, better mental function, less depression), military readiness (how you sell it to Congress), likely lower healthcare costs, and even more babies (cause fitter people would be meeting each other).
Just saying, that finding ways to introduce and encourage society-wide “PE for Adults” could be the New Deal for the 21st century. Has any country tried anything like this with any success?
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Yes. That’s basically already happening from what I can tell. Like everyone in south Florida seems to be on it.
Of all the bad drugs that do bad things to people one that made 80% of the population eat less is perhaps the best one imaginable for the planet. How much methane goes away when cattle herds are half as big because there is no demand for burgers?
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half of it?
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I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop with these miraculous weight loss drugs.
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I’d bet money on the opposite. In 10 years the drugs that will be available will be even safer and more effective.