this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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I'll read the publication in the coming days and report back, but don't get your hopes up. There's a "breakthrough" in cancer research every few months and it leads to nothing. And this study was done in mice which are a bit different to humans (citation needed)
They cured hair loss in mice at least twenty times now and we still have bald humans
They should probably find a way to turn humans into mice. It's a shame to leave billions of dollars on the table like that.
Might be a good concept for a sci fi story actually, probably a comedic one. Scientists learn how to cure any disease and reverse aging, but only for mice. Conveniently for plot reasons, they also figure out how to turn people into mice and back. You can get any disease cured or become young again...but you have to spend three months as a mouse.
Someone that knows what they're doing: I will watch this show.
Is Anne Hathaway coming back as the grand witch?
I know of a short story on becoming a mouse, but that one's focus is something euthanasia adjacent.
I cannot remember what but I've heard of mention of a story where because there's so many cures of disease for mice that they take over the world or something. It's such a faint mention sorry
Pinky and the Brain. Obviously.
Fuck that, just implant those mice on my scalp.
We have hair loss cures for humans too, the main roadblock for use is men like functioning balls.
I take finasteride and my balls are functioning
Why do we not simply transplant the hair from the mice, onto the humans?
To avoid rejection of the hair follicles, simply glue live mice to the top of your head.
This sounds like a ChatGPT response from the early days.
Gonna need a Lotta mice
At least 3
"Mice lie and monkeys exaggerate."
That's cause they're not on dutasteride, finasteride, or estrogen therapy. It's all the fault of DHT.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutasteride
I think this is overly negative. There have been multiple significant advances in cancer treatment over the past 10 years. It just depends which type you get.
Maybe overly negative by saying they come to "nothing", but if you trace those advances back to their initial press release stage, they generally way ovehype it.
Here we have what is being heralded as maybe a universal response to any and all cancer. That would be a shockingly amazing deviation from basically all the cancer research to date. It's possible and wonderful if true, but generally the research falls short of the initial press coverage, even if it amounts to something.
while you're not wrong i do want to reiterate that mRNA vaccines are likely going to be how we treat and cure cancers so there is precedent at least for this to be massive news. if not this there will likely be a real announcement one day.
The likelihood that all cancers express a common surface marker that is never expressed by any non-cancerous cell seems pretty low. Not a cancer biologist, but there's all kind of different genetic paths to cancer - why would they all cause some specific molecule to be expressed and why would no other cell ever use it?
Your instincts are correct. The approach in the paper is more complicated than this. Here is the abstract:
Eh a lot of them save some lives. Its just cancer is really good at killing people and there are a lot of types of cancer
It's why I start following it myself when it gets to the human trial stage and less the breakthrough stage. There, you make the assumption that they have a plan and are much more confident in the product.
I will remain eternally hopeful! Maybe someday. Maybe!
How about fusion power and room temperature superconductors...
ITER is still well under way as far as fusion goes. I doubt room temp super conductors will ever be a thing though. If we can get a metalic material which superconducts above the boiling point of nitrogen then that will be world changing enough.
LOL. ITER is not and has never been meant to be a fusion power plant. That would be DEMO.
Don't hold your breath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant
Fusion power will never, ever happen. Ever.
Look at CFS SPARC, not ITER
They will have an actual functioning fusion machine with Q>10 by end of this year thanks to high temperature superconductors that were not available when ITER started
https://cfs.energy/
Thanks for the laugh!
I've put a note in my calendar for December 2025.
Yeah just wait for the oil/LNG and helium reserves to run out. 🫠
Yes, I'm sure something as simple and resource-light as a fusion reactor will be exactly the thing we'll be able to build when the oil runs out.
Oil/LNG not likely to be exhausted in our lifetime, nor do we seem to have the global political willpower to do enough about climate change or perturb capital. Furthermore, the article talks about a lack of VC finding making it unlikely to be viable in the mean time. This is the basis of the sardonic statement in agreement with your comment but also intending to cast a political light on the concern from my end.
Indeed not, but that EROEI is going towards 1, and maybe even <1. That's not the same type of civilization any more. One sends people to play golf on the Moon to impress the neighbors.
The other densifies its cities in desperation hoping the food doesn't run out.
Yes. i much prefer the gay luxury space communism and capital must be destroyed if we want to survive.