Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
toblix

Awesome Medical Breakthroughs Thread

Recommended Posts

This is the opposite of those two. I think the researchers could have tried harder.

What a great bit of trivia to amaze people with: "When you look tired, you don't look as attractive as when you don't look tired. Fact!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Man, science. I love hearing about this. The fun thing is, novel, possibly effective ways of battling cancer and HIV are springing up everywhere, it seems. If it isn't stem cells, its through scorpion venom or nano probes!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember a William Gibson book where he pointed out something really obvious that I'd never considered before: The AIDS virus is flawed... it doesn't want to kill its host (ie. the person it has infected) because it means it dies, too. Eventually it should evolve to the point where it is non-lethal, so it can survive longer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well it's arguable that viruses are even alive - they don't fit all the definitions for life. They're more like rogue fragments of RNA.

They are subject to the same kind of selection pressure as organisms though. Unfortunately fitness selection doesn't carry weight if the virus is passed on before the host dies. Once it has spread, anything that happens to the previous host is irrelevant.

Since a patient can be HIV positive for some time before developing AIDS, combined with high rate of infection... well it's a sad combination, one that means the virus is under no pressure to evolve further - it's doing just fine. Of course it might mutate randomly, but don't hold your breath. More likely is that limited resistance will evolve in humans first.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That tech is pretty damn cool! Also, when did Kotaku become a medical treatment blog?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sweet. I hope it moves along quickly, sadly there's such a backlog of interesting medical research and tech that needs to be ratified before it can be widely distributed. I understand the necessity of oversight, but the current systems are clearly far from perfect.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is this me or is it strange that they dare communicate the result of an open trial made on only 22 people?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

o4Z8CqAiYI8



Man, I couldn't find a place for this. We need an awesome sciency stuff thread.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×