Post your unpopular opinions

[Propter W.]

Can be successfully treated how... and with what degree of success and at what cost physically to the patient... and after how many years and how many billions of dollars invested in research. And the common cold? Perhaps of little consequence... except when it leads to something worse in the young, the elderly, the diabetic, etc... not to speak of the ever-looming potential for the mutation and epidemic spread of a deadly virus. Yet just the simply common cold surely costs billion of dollars in lost productivity alone... yet science has give erections to octogenarians and grow hair on a bowling ball so it seems we know where the focus lies.

Your expectations and demands are unrealistic.

[stlukesguild]

It's not about prejudice or racism.

It becomes racially charged when you make assumptions that a developing nation should curtail its growth for the good of the planet... at the cost of remaining poor and undeveloped as opposed to the Western nations. It becomes racially charged when you suggest families limit the number of children they have when families in these developing nations face the very real problem of high child and infant mortality.

That "recognition that one cannot stretch the population beyond the ability of the nation to meet the needs of that population" never happened.

Maybe you need to read your history a little better. There are studies that show that prior to the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) of the 1300s European populations had grown to a level that was unsustainable. Many were already facing malnutrition which further weakened them when ultimately confronted with the plague. The populations of Europe did not again match the period before the plague for 150-200 years. Various documentation used for measuring population growth and family size show that family size was curtailed... especially in the Northern European nations... and this curtailment correlated with the growing wealth of the same nations (England, Holland, France ). By the time the population had returned to the pre-plague numbers Europe was able to sustain this population through increased agricultural production and trade.

Can the US quench its thrist for oil without going abroad? How many mouths in the US are fed with imported food? Are dressed by imported clothes?

So you suggest that we return to an era of pre-civilization where there is no trade... where every small community must be able the fully sustain itself? That's ridiculous. The US, by the way, is the third largest agricultural producer in the world. It ranks only after India and China. The US produces far more than can be used by the US population and as a result they sell much on the international market. The US is actually responsible for fully half the food sold in export in the world. In return the US consumers import foods that are not native to the US (banana, kiwi, etc...) as well as foods that can be more inexpensively grown elsewhere (grapes). Few if any nations are wholly self-sustaining and this has been true for eons.

It's the entire world that needs to curtail its growth. If we fail to do that, we will ultimately face the consequences of our irresponsibility.

What will be the consequence? Does anyone really have a notion as to where the line of sustainability is broached? As populations grow the productivity also increases... as a result of the science you so champion. Some nations have already passed the level at which they can sustain themselves as the results are warfare, malnutrition, famine, etc... Again, how do we dictate to these developing nations that they need to curtail their growth and not strive to match the standard of living of the wealthier Western nations that are able to sustain themselves? How does one dictate to the wealthy Western nations that they need to cut back and lower their standards of living to offset population explosions in the third world? And do you imagine that if the US and Western Europe and Japan and China were to cut back upon their standard of living that this would translate into increased productivity in the developing nations?

[stlukesguild]

Can be successfully treated how... and with what degree of success and at what cost physically to the patient... and after how many years and how many billions of dollars invested in research. And the common cold? Perhaps of little consequence... except when it leads to something worse in the young, the elderly, the diabetic, etc... not to speak of the ever-looming potential for the mutation and epidemic spread of a deadly virus. Yet just the simply common cold surely costs billion of dollars in lost productivity alone... yet science has give erections to octogenarians and grow hair on a bowling ball so it seems we know where the focus lies.

Your expectations and demands are unrealistic.

My expectations are very realistic. I "expect" that human beings will always act like human beings... that they will put forth their best effort where there is the most personal gain. Scientists and those who employ scientists are no different. There was more money to be made from giving perpetual erections and growing hair on bald men than there is in treating the common cold. There is more money to be made for the huge pharmaceutical companies in "treating" many illnesses with a continual need for treatment than there is in developing an actual cure. There is more money to be made by continuing oil dependency... even at the cost of shipping the oil around the globe or dangerously drilling in the oceans than there is to be made from developing alternative fuel sources.

[Propter W.]

My expectations are very realistic.

Can be successfully treated how... and with what degree of success and at what cost physically to the patient... and after how many years and how many billions of dollars invested in research.

First you say scientists can't cure cancer, and when they do... it's not fast enough, not comfortable enough and not cheap enough. I call that unrealistic expectations.

[stlukesguild]

First you say scientists can't cure cancer, and when they do... it's not fast enough, not comfortable enough and not cheap enough. I call that unrealistic expectations.

Science is grossly limited in "curing" cancer. They are able to stop some forms of cancer but this often involves major surgery, radiation, and chemo therapy. To suggest this is an issue of comfort suggests you know nothing whatsoever about cancer or what patients face with regard to treatment. Chemo therapy essentially involves poisoning and killing the cells of the body and hoping that it is the cancer cells that dies off before the rest of the body. There is little or no chance of a cure for many forms of cancer or for cancer that has progressed beyond a given stage. Still billions are funneled into research with little or no result and one is left to wonder how it is that science can drill for oil miles beneath the ocean floor, land on the moon and mars, create weapons that can hit targets that are selected employing satellites in outer-space but they still seem confounded by any number of realities of human existence. I find it surprising that anyone living past the horrors of the 20th century... many wrought by blind faith in progress and technology... would still have such an idealistic belief in the miracles of science.

[Dodo25]

I find it surprising that anyone living past the horrors of the 20th century... many wrought by blind faith in progress and technology... would still have such an idealistic belief in the miracles of science.

Why so pessimistic? Watch this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/st..._violence.html

[OrphanPip]

My expectations are very realistic. I "expect" that human beings will always act like human beings... that they will put forth their best effort where there is the most personal gain. Scientists and those who employ scientists are no different. There was more money to be made from giving perpetual erections and growing hair on bald men than there is in treating the common cold. There is more money to be made for the huge pharmaceutical companies in "treating" many illnesses with a continual need for treatment than there is in developing an actual cure. There is more money to be made by continuing oil dependency... even at the cost of shipping the oil around the globe or dangerously drilling in the oceans than there is to be made from developing alternative fuel sources.

This is not really an accurate view of science today. Hell if you want to complain about science's priorities, it's society at fault not the scientist. Scientist don't self-finance, they rely on the government, or increasingly, private financing. If people really wanted a cure for the common cold, they'd finance it (and actually large amounts of private money has gone into producing cold remedies, I'm not sure why we should even try to cure the common cold). Is that the fault of the scientist? I don't think so. The best and the brightest scientist working today still work in the universities, off of public money, on projects with humanitarian goals. The head of my department at McGill worked on more cost effective treatments of Leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that effects primarily poor rural South Americans. Other research conducted in the department include a large HIV lab, a tuberculosis research lab, and some theoretical basic science labs. Scientist want to feed their families as much as the next person, but people don't choose to be scientist to get rich, it's a horrible career path if you want job security and good pay.

[Propter W.]

Science is grossly limited in "curing" cancer. They are able to stop some forms of cancer but this often involves major surgery, radiation, and chemo therapy. To suggest this is an issue of comfort suggests you know nothing whatsoever about cancer or what patients face with regard to treatment. Chemo therapy essentially involves poisoning and killing the cells of the body and hoping that it is the cancer cells that dies off before the rest of the body. There is little or no chance of a cure for many forms of cancer or for cancer that has progressed beyond a given stage. Still billions are funneled into research with little or no result and one is left to wonder how it is that science can drill for oil miles beneath the ocean floor, land on the moon and mars, create weapons that can hit targets that are selected employing satellites in outer-space but they still seem confounded by any number of realities of human existence. I find it surprising that anyone living past the horrors of the 20th century... many wrought by blind faith in progress and technology... would still have such an idealistic belief in the miracles of science.

I know what chemo is. Some cancers can be cured rather easily, especially if they are discovered early enough. Some are very difficult to treat.

Either way, this isn't a debate about cancer. Like I said, you have unrealistic expectations and demands of science.

You want a cure for cancer, but you don't want money to go to research or you think the research's not fast enough. When they find ways to cure cancers or treat them successfully, you consider it "little or no result". I can tell you that all this money and time, which you consider wasted, has saved a lot of people. You object to chemo, yet don't understand why more money is invested in cancer research...

Then you suddenly change the topic from cancer to oil, to moon landings to weapons. It's odd you don't focus on all the drugs that do work for countless other diseases or the successful surgeries that save lives on a daily basis. Why not a word about the amazing advances in prostheses?

Your assumption that no one is left to wonder about those things you listed is simply wrong. Your assumption that I have an idealistic belief in science is also wrong. Science is neither good nor bad.

[Technophile]

@ The Atheist: My opinion is unpopular amongst followers of the Neurodiversity movement, which is why I've moved away from them to start the True Neurodiversity movement. They think all of us should be proud and not simply accept the fact of difference.

[OrphanPip]

I know what chemo is. Some cancers can be cured rather easily, especially if they are discovered early enough.

His description of chemotherapy is rather narrow as well. Although, in basic terms it is "poisoning the body" in an attempt to kill the cancer cells before you, it is not as willy-nilly as he implies. The drugs used are particularly targeted to non-senescent cells, radiotherapy also disproportionately effects rapidly dividing cells (where mutations can multiply much quicker) than senescent cells. It's not directionless use of poisons. Likewise, many of our last ditch antibiotics are toxic against our own mitochondria. Life shares common origins, so it is not so easy to find things that only kill the harmful stuff. We are lucky to have drugs like beta-lactams (penicillin family drugs) that target gram-negative cell wall production, instead of still using sulfa drugs that are highly toxic to both humans and bacteria. Our knowledge of cancer, and human molecular biology in general, increases annually, eventually we will understand enough, and have the technology, to target cancer cells directly in the way we are now able to target bacteria directly with a vast array of drugs.

The thing is that drilling oil from the bottom of the ocean and flying to the moon were simply easier problems to solve than curing all cancers (which are diverse) or HIV.

This isn't to say there aren't problems with the way biological science is conducted. Public funding for basic research science, like understanding molecular biology, has to be goal based these days. So, I know from personal experience that many researchers in biology tag on possible uses for cancer research, even if they aren't interested in cancer, to get funding. It's really hard to get funding otherwise if you're trying to figure out how X transcription factor expressed in the kidneys functions. Our society doesn't want to foster basic science research anymore, instead they want all our efforts directed towards practical applications, the problem with this is that we rely on our knowledge of basic science to access new practical applications. The basic sciences in biology have done decently well in the molecular and biochemical fields, because their relation to practical solutions is much more apparent. However, physics and physical chemistry have suffered greatly. As have behavioral biology and ecology, who rely entirely on increasingly slim government funding. Likewise, the vast majority of HIV research is concentrated on finding treatments and vaccines for the prominent Western strain, while many other strains exist in Africa with little scientific attention.

The old adage about how "we can put a man on the moon but can't cure the common cold" is entirely misguided. First of all, the number of strains of rhino viridae and adeno viridae is so large as to make cold vaccination an entirely futile effort when we could much better use our resources to study Hepatitis C and HIV, which actually kill people. Likewise, parasitic disease are fairly easy to eliminate with increases in hygiene and killing the vectors (like mosquitoes) than it is to develop direct cures. So, as much as I appreciate the efforts of scientist to find helpful cures for Leishmaniasis, the ultimate problem for those rural Peruvians isn't flesh eating parasites but poverty. I'd also add that HIV is controllable with widespread education campaigns, Nigeria and Thailand have proven this, so Sub-Saharan Africa's AIDS epidemic is largely a result of poor government. Tuberculosis, likewise, is easily controllable with proper medical infrastructure (cases pop up annually in developed countries and are quickly controlled), but kills millions annually in Asia and Africa. Much of the "failures" of modern science are more so the failures of governments than they are of individual scientist.

[breathtest]

First of all, the number of strains of rhino viridae and adeno viridae is so large as to make cold vaccination an entirely futile effort when we could much better use our resources to study Hepatitis C and HIV, which actually kill people.

The common cold does kill people. Granted not on the same scale as HIV and hepatitis, but it does kill. Most people who die from it are the elderly, the young, and people whose immune system is already weakened, perhaps by another minor illness.

[OrphanPip]

The common cold does kill people. Granted not on the same scale as HIV and hepatitis, but it does kill. Most people who die from it are the elderly, the young, and people whose immune system is already weakened, perhaps by another minor illness.

Influenza, yes, pneumonia, frequently, but the common cold, not often. The common cold is usually used to refer to viral rhinitis, a viral infection of the sinuses, not usually implicated int he deaths of the elderly.

Edit: Specifically, strains of rhinovirus are very rarely indicated in severe upper respiratory tract infections.

Edit: Bacterial pneumonia, and influenza are often causes of death in infants and the elderly though. But we do have effective treatments for both when they are diagnosed in time, and we have a very effective preventative against influenza.

[Alexander III]

His description of chemotherapy is rather narrow as well. Although, in basic terms it is "poisoning the body" in an attempt to kill the cancer cells before you, it is not as willy-nilly as he implies. The drugs used are particularly targeted to non-senescent cells, radiotherapy also disproportionately effects rapidly dividing cells (where mutations can multiply much quicker) than senescent cells. It's not directionless use of poisons. Likewise, many of our last ditch antibiotics are toxic against our own mitochondria. Life shares common origins, so it is not so easy to find things that only kill the harmful stuff. We are lucky to have drugs like beta-lactams (penicillin family drugs) that target gram-negative cell wall production, instead of still using sulfa drugs that are highly toxic to both humans and bacteria. Our knowledge of cancer, and human molecular biology in general, increases annually, eventually we will understand enough, and have the technology, to target cancer cells directly in the way we are now able to target bacteria directly with a vast array of drugs.

The thing is that drilling oil from the bottom of the ocean and flying to the moon were simply easier problems to solve than curing all cancers (which are diverse) or HIV.

This isn't to say there aren't problems with the way biological science is conducted. Public funding for basic research science, like understanding molecular biology, has to be goal based these days. So, I know from personal experience that many researchers in biology tag on possible uses for cancer research, even if they aren't interested in cancer, to get funding. It's really hard to get funding otherwise if you're trying to figure out how X transcription factor expressed in the kidneys functions. Our society doesn't want to foster basic science research anymore, instead they want all our efforts directed towards practical applications, the problem with this is that we rely on our knowledge of basic science to access new practical applications. The basic sciences in biology have done decently well in the molecular and biochemical fields, because their relation to practical solutions is much more apparent. However, physics and physical chemistry have suffered greatly. As have behavioral biology and ecology, who rely entirely on increasingly slim government funding. Likewise, the vast majority of HIV research is concentrated on finding treatments and vaccines for the prominent Western strain, while many other strains exist in Africa with little scientific attention.

The old adage about how "we can put a man on the moon but can't cure the common cold" is entirely misguided. First of all, the number of strains of rhino viridae and adeno viridae is so large as to make cold vaccination an entirely futile effort when we could much better use our resources to study Hepatitis C and HIV, which actually kill people. Likewise, parasitic disease are fairly easy to eliminate with increases in hygiene and killing the vectors (like mosquitoes) than it is to develop direct cures. So, as much as I appreciate the efforts of scientist to find helpful cures for Leishmaniasis, the ultimate problem for those rural Peruvians isn't flesh eating parasites but poverty. I'd also add that HIV is controllable with widespread education campaigns, Nigeria and Thailand have proven this, so Sub-Saharan Africa's AIDS epidemic is largely a result of poor government. Tuberculosis, likewise, is easily controllable with proper medical infrastructure (cases pop up annually in developed countries and are quickly controlled), but kills millions annually in Asia and Africa. Much of the "failures" of modern science are more so the failures of governments than they are of individual scientist.

Thank you for this, I gained a lot of insight, but it seems to me that you blame politics and, the mindset that science is only useful to solve practical problems; as the problem of modern science. But this problem has been there since the dawn of time, there has never been a society where scientific progress was not driven by politics, and the favorance of applicable science as opposed to theoretical science.

[breathtest]

Influenza, yes, pneumonia, frequently, but the common cold, not often. The common cold is usually used to refer to viral rhinitis, a viral infection of the sinuses, not usually implicated int he deaths of the elderly.

Edit: Specifically, strains of rhinovirus are very rarely indicated in severe upper respiratory tract infections.

Edit: Bacterial pneumonia, and influenza are often causes of death in infants and the elderly though. But we do have effective treatments for both when they are diagnosed in time, and we have a very effective preventative against influenza.

thanks, i didn't know any of that.

[OrphanPip]

Thank you for this, I gained a lot of insight, but it seems to me that you blame politics and, the mindset that science is only useful to solve practical problems; as the problem of modern science. But this problem has been there since the dawn of time, there has never been a society where scientific progress was not driven by politics, and the favorance of applicable science as opposed to theoretical science.

I think this is generally true, except for brief periods where science flourished off of individual patronage rather than institutionalized funding. Many early scientist just conducted experiments in their free time, as many came from the nobility. Mendel, a Catholic monk, had all the time in the world to grow peas and build his theory of inheritance. I think the problem of modern science is largely that science is very expensive to conduct, a scholar of literature is relatively cheap to maintain as opposed to a biology lab with expensive machines and a full staff of technitians and assistants. So, there is much less willingness to invest in research that might not produce returns, other than expanded knowledge. Scientist operate under the maxim of "publish or perish," if you don't produce results your career is over, this results in a cutthroat industry of pre-empting the publications of others. A PhD. student I had as a T.A. had his thesis work pre-empted by a Chinese research group one month before publishing his own research. His research went from a top tier publication to a 2nd tier, virtually stifling his career options for several years. A publication in Nature or Science, the giants of science publishing, will make you set for life. The focus on high impact publishing, i.e. you not only have to produce results, but results people will care about, further serves to focus research onto a few key fields (cancer and HIV being the giants in biomedical research) and leads to the neglect of areas where research might be more fruitful.

However, I mainly object to the common criticism of science as being about big money and private interest, this isn't the fault of science, we all share the blame in private funding shaping the focus of research. I'm not saying science was better in the past, I actually think it was worse. Today we have an international publishing community, the scientific endeavors of every university in the world are pooled in the major journals. The standardized system of research and publishing is also much more efficient for producing reliable results than we ever had in the past. Now science is a collaborative effort, we rarely hear of great scientist like Pasteur or Newton anymore because individual breakthroughs are a thing of the past, rarely is a major paper published without 10 co-authors from various institutions. I think science works better today than it has in the past, but it's not perfect, as if any human endeavor could be.

Edit: I'd like to add though that the USA actually does a very good job of financing the basic sciences. Funding in Canada involves even more bureaucratic hoop jumping.