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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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This article is garbage but I'm a molecular biologist and the publication they're talking about is really neat.
The "ELI5 to the point of maybe reducing out the truth" way to explain it is that the researchers can add "flags" to proteins associated with immune responses that make cells pick them up and examine them. This is shown to work for allergins (so say, add a flag to peanut protein and the cells can look at it more closely, go "oh nvm this is fine" and stop freaking out about peanuts) as well as autoimmune diseases (where cells mistake other cells from the same body as potential threats).
It's not nearly to a treatment stage, but tbh this is one of the more exciting approaches I've seen, and I do similar research and thus read a lot of papers like this.
There's a lot of evidence that we are entering a biological "golden age" and we will discover a ton of amazing things very soon. It's worrysome that we still have to deal with instability in other parts of life (climate change, wealth inequality, political polarization) that might slow down the process of turning these discoveries into actual treatments we can use to make lives better...
Still, don't doubt everything you read! A lot of cool stuff is coming, the trick is getting it past the red tape
Wealth inequality won't stop these discoveries making people's lives better, it will just ensure that the 1% live forever in perfect health and the 99% get to watch their kids and grandkids get sicker as the environment, living standards and employment situation deteriorate, until automation gets to a point where the working class are no longer required and can be safely left to starve or killed off.
Americans invest milions in healh evolution and only 1% of the americans can use it. On the other hand every other country with a free heath care will provide the solution discovered by americans for free to their people. Americans dying to keep the world alive. This is really fucked up.
This is basically my fear, also. How can I retain hope that new, amazing treatments will help people if we don't even have equitable access to the current treatments?
For example, we still make people seeking medicines for mental health try going through a gauntlet of dependency-forming drugs from greater than half a century ago (that have been shown to be effective in less than half of people who take them) before insurance will pony up for contemporary alternatives (that work much more often).
I don't work in the clinical space so don't trust me too much... but jeez we have so many things to solve before the "bio golden age" really helps normal people