Muffintop's feed

  • 6 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    If natural selection took care of anti-vaxxers etc, wouldn't it have happened by now? In addition, I could argue that the society is also responsible for the education of it's members. Both with anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers - their actions will end up hurting people who are both smart and have done nothing wrong.

  • 6 years ago
    Achievement Muffintop

    Brainiac

    Published 10/10 analysis snaps! Congratulations Muffintop on this achievement!

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  • 6 years ago
    Analysis Muffintop

    Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks | Dana Nuccitelli

    Dana Nuccitelli: A new study finds that explaining the techniques of science denial makes people resistant to their effects

  • 6 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Not so sure about this.. Any president, no matter how progressive or anti establishment will have to deal with Wall Street and 'the establishment'. He (or she) will have to build relationships with those groups in order to push through any changes. There's no point in living in an imaginary world where a knight in a shining armour will appear who won't even talk to Wall Street, Republicans and establishment Democrats and, yet, somehow manage to change the US for better. Was Obama the perfect president? Not really. Was he awful? Not even close. Should we aim to elect candidates that will progressively limit the power of Wall Street? Absolutely. But more Obama, Hillary or any other hate does no good, no matter how comfortable living in the hate bubble feels.

  • 6 years ago
    Related Link Muffintop

    Type 2 diabetes can be cured in four months — if you cut calories and exercise, research shows

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  • 6 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Well, it's well established that lifestyle is a major factor for type two diabetes. You know what would be even more efficient? Cutting calories and exercising before getting type two diabetes. And not just intensively for a couple of weeks, but consistently. The difficult part is making people do that. We'd rather eat junk food, watch telly and pop some pills when disease strikes.

  • 7 years ago
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    Level 15

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Yes, it would. But in the scenario I described nobody gets infected on purpose and the exposure risk for control group is just as high as it would be without the trial. Does that make it ethically acceptable for you?

  • 7 years ago
    Achievement Muffintop

    Good Image

    Reached a reputation rating of 75%. Congratulations Muffintop on this achievement!

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    What kind of ethical issues were you thinking about? I'm not an expert on organising clinical trials but here's how I think it could go: unless they need other smaller trials to check other things, the main task of the next trial would be confirming the efficacy of the vaccine while still keeping a close eye on the safety.

    So they would have more participants and possibly a longer trial period. One group would receive the vaccine, the control group would receive an injection of saline (and wouldn't know that it's saline). Then, perhaps, the participants would just go about their lives and come back for check ups every now and then. The clinicians would then compare how many people get malaria in the control versus vaccinated group. For this they would use complicated statistical analysis to compare how many people get infected in each group.

    Nobody would be infected on purpose, they would just try to see if any of the "real life infections" are prevented. And the control group would be no worse off than they would be without taking part in the trial.

    The only downside of this approach? It would require a lot of participants and thus such trial would cost a lot. Also, it wouldn't give sensational headlines such as 100% efficacy ;)

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Easiest thing you can do to get some protection against profiling and manipulation? Get an adblock of your choice and use it! uBlock Origin is a decent choice, get it here for firefox, chrome or safari.

  • 7 years ago
    Related Link Muffintop

    Five HIV patients left 'virus-free' with no need for daily drugs in early vaccine trials

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    It's great to hear that we're making progress on HIV vaccine, however, this is yet another exciting headline which doesn't reflect the reality of the study.

    The key is that out of 15 patients who received the vaccine booster,in 10 of the participants, the virus rapidly bounced back. Five participants have no detectable virus 7 months, 6, 14, 19 and 21 weeks.

    So for the majority of the participants the vaccine in it's current form failed. The rest have been free from virus a really short time, it could still reappear. Indeed, the New Scientist article, which this article was based upon, mentions cases of the virus returning months and even years after other reported "cures".

    Let's hope for the best and wait for the results of the follow ups and other clinical trials. Yet, be careful of those sensational headlines.

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    This is an exciting development, however, once again media is trying to make a sensation out of preliminary science. The vaccine prevented infection in 9 out of 9 (!!!!) volunteers ten weeks after the vaccination. Nine is an extremely small number of volunteers and this kind of trials primary tests the preliminary safety before larger trials. And while it gives hope, there's also a good chance that the vaccine will fail in a larger trial. Could be many things - with more testing, it could reveal toxicity, or lack of efficacy in larger groups of people, or it could stop working at week eleven after the vaccination. It's good to hear about the progress of science but let's not forget that science can be really tough and that there's many things that could go wrong before we actually have an effective malaria vaccine.

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  • 7 years ago
    Related Link Muffintop

    An Epidemic of Unnecessary Treatment

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    A great read. This reminded me of another excellent article about the value of incremental medicine. I'll add the link to related links. We really need to rethink our healthcare systems and truly innovate to achieve affordable, high quality care.

  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Or perhaps it's not about how bad it was, but how bad it was made to look like?

  • 7 years ago
    Achievement Muffintop

    Trend Setter

    Have 2/2 snaps reach the maximum grid size on the front page grid view! Congratulations Muffintop on this achievement!

    +4170 XP
  • 7 years ago
    Related Link Muffintop

    Berlin Breitscheidplatz: Lorry kills nine at Christmas market - BBC News

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  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Turns out spiders don't have it easy when it comes to dating either ;)

  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Seems like an act of anger and despiration. Yet, this won't change Russia's despicable actions in Syria and won't change the inability of the world and the UN to stop this. No wonder people do not trust their governments and are loosing hope in humanity too.

  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    Such a tragedy so close to Christmas. Sending our thoughts to everyone in Berlin.

    Also, let's avoid speculation until facts have been established.

  • 7 years ago
    Current Event Muffintop

    Berlin Breitscheidplatz: Lorry kills nine at Christmas market - BBC News

    A suspected "deliberate attack" on a Christmas market in the heart of Berlin kills nine people.

  • 7 years ago
    Comment Muffintop

    This is a very interesting read and fascinating science. However, as it often happens, the reporting of this science is slightly misleading. First things first - this shows promising research in mice, however, quite frequently the research advances in mice do not work well in humans. They did some research using human cells but not quite enough to claim that we can get to human trials within 10 years, I'd say it will take more than 20 instead. Furthermore, there is a risk of tumours when these factors are used and while they acknowledge that and report that they did not observe any tumours in these mice, this will be a major safety issue before we can try something like this out in humans. Once again, this practically ensures that other major scientific breakthroughs are needed before such therapies can be tried out in humans. Great science, wish the reporting could explain things a bit better and avoid the temptation of clickbaity titles and claims.

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  • 7 years ago
    Related Link Muffintop

    Scientists reverse ageing in mammals and predict human trials within 10 years

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