2011-08-16, 09:39 AM
I'm going to show you exactly what I took issue with your post, Eos.
That, is what I mean by stabbing your own feet. You basically contradicted yourself. The rest of your previous posts were starting to go off-tangent because I was specifically taking issue with this post, and substantiating myself as to why your post was flawed, and had nothing to do with my stance on this thing. I just included all the rest of the stuff in my later posts. The HIV thing is part of the reason for my stance towards DRACO. NOT the other way round. Your substantiation has also not been sufficiently credible, although I admit that mine, even though it is based on scientific theory, is still a theory that isn't backed by anyone. We're not any better than each other, on this aspect.
------[the rest of the paragraphs below may be ignored if you can't be bothered to read more sciency stuff]------
Now, about all the fuss about me being negative, and what they say and didn't say.
The paper says it can do ___________. The paper says it has potential to do ___________. It did not say it can do ______________.
I remind all of you that the media does not always convey what the paper hopes to convey exactly. General idea, yes. I'm very sure the authors would want their work to be advertised [hence what I said earlier about "making noise"]. It is then very easy for the media and the general public to give excessive hope, or overstate its capabilities. In this case, the paper did not say that DRACO can cure HIV, because they have not tested it. In theory, maybe, maybe not - the paper did NOT say anything about curing HIV using DRACO at all. You CANNOT extrapolate blindly and start saying that DRACO can cure XXX and YYY because of several precedent successes (and I note: no reported failures yet).
[And to make things super clear: what the media said (given that url) that this thing claims to be able to do, and what the paper claims to be able to do, is similar, but not exactly the same. This part is explained below.]
If you don't bother to try and understand what I said earlier, too bad then. If you still prefer to think of this as a miracle cure, by all means. I am here to explain exactly what the paper is supposed to convey, and why you cannot totally believe what the media says. Hell... even in papers researchers do all kinds of things to make their papers sell and be accepted by the journals.
MIT is not a guarantee that the work is excellent - the point is: what university it is, has no bearing on the impact of the work, or whether it is a good or lacklustre work. E.g. all work coming from Harvard is good? Why don't you do a google search on "harvard scientist", and see what you get?
"Miracle drugs" aren't all pseudo-scientific garbage. This one here has potential (though it'd still have some limits somewhere I believe), though ask much as I'd like to ask you to look at some of the older threads, you can't because they're not around anymore (unless there's an archive somewhere?). Well... it depends on how you define "miracle drug"... Blockbuster drug? Cures all ____ diseases? Does _____? Rosaglitazone was a blockbuster, but it doesn't actually really work. Penicillin... doesn't cure all bacterial infections even back at the time when it was discovered, but people call it a "miracle drug" because it can save so many lives, while being ignorant (not intentionally) about what it can't cure. To the point that back then, people prescribed penicillin to any kind of malaise or medical issues that you could think of.
So what's my point after saying so much? Don't take things at face value. Read between the lines. Do not infer blindly. Sometimes, what is NOT said can be more important than what is said. And obviously you have to be able to tell what isn't said (you'd have to be in the field to do most of this, however).
And, drug/treatment discovery is an enormously long process, easily 10 years. With so many different things that they have to go through, any of these drugs/cures can fail at any clinical trial, no matter how much the press describes it as "miracle drug" or not, or how much hope you put into it. Why I always advice caution: false hope, once dashed, can shatter people's will. There is no additional benefit of telling to the world how miraculous a drug is, if it hasn't gone through a significantly long process of testing - I'd say, phase IIA.
A quibble on the paper: I'll quote from it then.
Sure the summary says things so nicely, and the abstract as well:
Now amongst all the viruses said here, NONE of them are retroviruses. Even if HIV is a (+)-ssRNA virus, the way it replicates is different from conventional (+)-ssRNA viruses. As a specific example, you absolutely cannot say right now that it can cure HIV, because they have not tested a precedent model retrovirus (e.g. lentivirus, FIV). Broad spectrum does not equate to all-covering. 15 different viruses, and the family of viruses that they are in. That, and a couple more reasonable extrapolations, is all that you can say for DRACO. It's still a very broad spectrum cure, it's an awesome discovery, so if that qualifies for your definition of "miracle drug", so be it. But it certainly hasn't been shown yet to be able to cure everything else. The theory is a good one, nice, but not foolproof, and certainly a theory until proven (beyond reasonable doubt) to be true.
In a way, it's not a slip on the part of the authors - in fact this is one of the ways that they will sell their paper. Scientists who read this paper will understand and appreciate their idea, and then identify what's not being explicitly mentioned. I'm just being pointed here.
Hadriel
Eos Wrote:Right, because HIV is the only virus in the universe that inconveniences injures or kills.
Hell, just in STDs this would eliminate both HPV & Herpes, plus HIV, because yes, as someone else asked, even HIV uses double stranded RNA
"Lentiviruses are transmitted as single-stranded, positive-sense, enveloped RNA viruses. Upon entry into the target cell, the viral RNA genome is converted (reverse transcribed) into double-stranded DNA by a virally encoded reverse transcriptase that is transported along with the viral genome in the virus particle. The resulting viral DNA is then imported into the cell nucleus and integrated into the cellular DNA by a virally encoded integrase and host co-factors."
and would therefore be hunted down and eliminated.
That, is what I mean by stabbing your own feet. You basically contradicted yourself. The rest of your previous posts were starting to go off-tangent because I was specifically taking issue with this post, and substantiating myself as to why your post was flawed, and had nothing to do with my stance on this thing. I just included all the rest of the stuff in my later posts. The HIV thing is part of the reason for my stance towards DRACO. NOT the other way round. Your substantiation has also not been sufficiently credible, although I admit that mine, even though it is based on scientific theory, is still a theory that isn't backed by anyone. We're not any better than each other, on this aspect.
------[the rest of the paragraphs below may be ignored if you can't be bothered to read more sciency stuff]------
Now, about all the fuss about me being negative, and what they say and didn't say.
The paper says it can do ___________. The paper says it has potential to do ___________. It did not say it can do ______________.
I remind all of you that the media does not always convey what the paper hopes to convey exactly. General idea, yes. I'm very sure the authors would want their work to be advertised [hence what I said earlier about "making noise"]. It is then very easy for the media and the general public to give excessive hope, or overstate its capabilities. In this case, the paper did not say that DRACO can cure HIV, because they have not tested it. In theory, maybe, maybe not - the paper did NOT say anything about curing HIV using DRACO at all. You CANNOT extrapolate blindly and start saying that DRACO can cure XXX and YYY because of several precedent successes (and I note: no reported failures yet).
[And to make things super clear: what the media said (given that url) that this thing claims to be able to do, and what the paper claims to be able to do, is similar, but not exactly the same. This part is explained below.]
If you don't bother to try and understand what I said earlier, too bad then. If you still prefer to think of this as a miracle cure, by all means. I am here to explain exactly what the paper is supposed to convey, and why you cannot totally believe what the media says. Hell... even in papers researchers do all kinds of things to make their papers sell and be accepted by the journals.
MIT is not a guarantee that the work is excellent - the point is: what university it is, has no bearing on the impact of the work, or whether it is a good or lacklustre work. E.g. all work coming from Harvard is good? Why don't you do a google search on "harvard scientist", and see what you get?
"Miracle drugs" aren't all pseudo-scientific garbage. This one here has potential (though it'd still have some limits somewhere I believe), though ask much as I'd like to ask you to look at some of the older threads, you can't because they're not around anymore (unless there's an archive somewhere?). Well... it depends on how you define "miracle drug"... Blockbuster drug? Cures all ____ diseases? Does _____? Rosaglitazone was a blockbuster, but it doesn't actually really work. Penicillin... doesn't cure all bacterial infections even back at the time when it was discovered, but people call it a "miracle drug" because it can save so many lives, while being ignorant (not intentionally) about what it can't cure. To the point that back then, people prescribed penicillin to any kind of malaise or medical issues that you could think of.
So what's my point after saying so much? Don't take things at face value. Read between the lines. Do not infer blindly. Sometimes, what is NOT said can be more important than what is said. And obviously you have to be able to tell what isn't said (you'd have to be in the field to do most of this, however).
And, drug/treatment discovery is an enormously long process, easily 10 years. With so many different things that they have to go through, any of these drugs/cures can fail at any clinical trial, no matter how much the press describes it as "miracle drug" or not, or how much hope you put into it. Why I always advice caution: false hope, once dashed, can shatter people's will. There is no additional benefit of telling to the world how miraculous a drug is, if it hasn't gone through a significantly long process of testing - I'd say, phase IIA.
A quibble on the paper: I'll quote from it then.
Quote:DRACOs should be effective against numerous clinical and NIAID priority viruses, due to the broad-spectrum sensitivity of the dsRNA detection domain, the potent activity of the apoptosis induction domain, and the novel direct linkage between the two which viruses have never encountered. We have demonstrated that DRACOs are effective against viruses with DNA, dsRNA, positive-sense ssRNA, and negative-sense ssRNA genomes; enveloped and non-enveloped viruses; viruses that replicate in the cytoplasm and viruses that replicate in the nucleus; human, bat, and rodent viruses; and viruses that use a variety of cellular receptors/
Sure the summary says things so nicely, and the abstract as well:
Quote:... We have created DRACOs and shown that they are nontoxic in 11 mammalian cell types and effective against 15 different viruses, including dengue flavivirus, Amapari and Tacaribe arenaviruses, Guama bunyavirus, and H1N1 influenza. We have also demonstrated that DRACOs can rescue mice challenged with H1N1 influenza. DRACOs have the potential to be effective therapeutics or prophylactics for numerous clinical and priority viruses, due to the broad-spectrum sensitivity of the dsRNA detection domain, the potent activity of the apoptosis induction domain, and the novel direct linkage between the two which viruses have never encountered.
Now amongst all the viruses said here, NONE of them are retroviruses. Even if HIV is a (+)-ssRNA virus, the way it replicates is different from conventional (+)-ssRNA viruses. As a specific example, you absolutely cannot say right now that it can cure HIV, because they have not tested a precedent model retrovirus (e.g. lentivirus, FIV). Broad spectrum does not equate to all-covering. 15 different viruses, and the family of viruses that they are in. That, and a couple more reasonable extrapolations, is all that you can say for DRACO. It's still a very broad spectrum cure, it's an awesome discovery, so if that qualifies for your definition of "miracle drug", so be it. But it certainly hasn't been shown yet to be able to cure everything else. The theory is a good one, nice, but not foolproof, and certainly a theory until proven (beyond reasonable doubt) to be true.
In a way, it's not a slip on the part of the authors - in fact this is one of the ways that they will sell their paper. Scientists who read this paper will understand and appreciate their idea, and then identify what's not being explicitly mentioned. I'm just being pointed here.
Hadriel
