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GenerWork 12 hours ago [-]
This is great news! I think people forget how anti-skin cancer protocols even as simple as applying suntan lotion weren't as popular as recent as 50-60 years ago. Lots of "sun children" of the 50s and 60s are now feeling the repercussions of only applying baby oil and are getting hit with lots of melanoma.
wincy 10 hours ago [-]
What’s funny is before the 50s and 60s everyone knew you should cover up and women wore bonnets. That too much sun was bad for you.
Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House fame (I mention this a lot as I read these to my children as an adult, and they’re a fascinating look at 1880s America) has lots of places where her mother says “put on your bonnet! Don’t get too much sun!”. We act like people in the past were ignorant but people in the 50s and 60s were just a very special type of arrogant, all of Chesterton’s fences were torn down during that time period.
ViktorRay 10 hours ago [-]
No I think you’re looking at this wrong.
They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside.
They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up.
There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed were ignorant on many things.
qlte 9 hours ago [-]
Or rather, linked to completely wrong negative health effects that were just “common knowledge” thus requiring no actual evidence like:
People with light skin should always wear a hat that fully covers the head/face in tropical/equatorial climates (okay, good so far) or else the powerful sun rays will penetrate the skull (?) causing brain damage that will make you go insane (!?!?)
Victorians may have inadvertently protected themselves against excess mortality due to melanomas with their pith helmets, but it’s pretty hard to argue they were actually “correct” with modern hindsight considering the entire chain of reasoning was wrong.
(For example, you see this in Kipling’s writing where he’ll randomly include an ominous case of some guy who forgot/lost his hat and promptly had to be committed to an insane asylum, as one does).
radicalbyte 6 hours ago [-]
They were too busy dying from typhoid, cholera, "consumption" (TB + other lung diseases) and probably lung cancer caused by all the coal / asbestos.
phs318u 4 hours ago [-]
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Pretty sure a bad sunburn sucked back then as much as now, and was something one tried to avoid.
bluGill 9 hours ago [-]
Unless you are albino (which is a large set of other problems) being in the sun all day will develop enough of a tan that you won't sunburn. There might be a problem in spring, but by summer time most people will have spent enough time outdoors that they wouldn't sunburn. I've always been the lightest person in town (a tie in Stockholm) and I can spend all day outside without any sunscreen and I won't burn on the parts of my body normally not covered (my arms), but other parts would burn in a few minutes (If I took off my hat or shirt...)
pigeof 8 hours ago [-]
It's bizarre that you cite being outside at 60 degrees latitude as evidence related to high UV exposure.
That's like a resident of Porto saying most people don't get frostbite walking around outside in winter...
bluGill 8 hours ago [-]
I've been outside at lots of different latitudes. I don't live in Stockholm, but I've been there.
laurencerowe 4 hours ago [-]
As someone from Britain with Scottish ancestry I don’t really tan at all. The melanin in my skin clumps in freckles, severely limiting its effectiveness at blocking UV. I can spend time outside in a t-shirt during the long summer evenings in Britain/Scandinavia but will burn during the midday sun. Living in California now the sun is stronger for longer so I just cover up.
San Francisco is at a southern European latitude. It’s a lot worse in the tropics.
foco_tubi 9 hours ago [-]
I don’t think this is correct, Black people still get sunburns
pessimizer 8 hours ago [-]
This is an illusory statistic because "black people" isn't a real category. People who self-identify as "black" have a wide-range of skin tones. Even a moderate bit of brown completely eliminates the risk of sunburn. You can have two "black" parents and be lighter skinned than the average southern Italian.
I say this from experience. I am a black person who is not particularly dark skinned, and have only had the slightest sunburn once in my life, after I had been working in a field for 16 hours straight in full sun under clear sky detasseling corn. When I got back to camp, the back of my neck seemed slightly sensitive, which was unusual. It was fine the next morning, and never peeled at all. I did the same for 2 weeks, and this was the only time I felt this. This was the worst sunburn (if it was one) that I've gotten in 50 years of life. I've spent plenty of time outside, and plenty of time inside being a code monkey and never going outside. I've never worn sunscreen.
I've never met a black person as brown as a paper bag who ever got a sunburn, at least that I know of. My dad is pretty pale, I think I would have heard about it.
foco_tubi 7 hours ago [-]
I’m overwhelming white ancestry but with some remnant traces of melanated ancestry (> 1%) and I tan very easily. I’ve been mistaken for hispanic or Black before during the summer. My mom is much darker than me.
We both get sunburns. My even darker grandmother got sunburns. My Black friends get sunburns. I am not sure that you are correctly correlating your experience with actual facts about the sunburn resistance offered by melanin.
kstrauser 7 hours ago [-]
As a counterexample, my bestie is "brown as a paper bag", and he was convinced he couldn't get a sunburn, up until he did.
Unrelated, he also swore he couldn't get poison ivy, until he literally rolled in it to prove it to me. I found the aftermath more amusing than he did.
bluGill 8 hours ago [-]
Black people who spend all their time indoors or covered up will get sunburned if they go outside. If that black person gradually increases their sun exposure they can (in a few weeks) reach the point where they can be outside without sunscreen and they will not get sun burned.
Note that I'm making no claims on how natural sunburn resistant affects skin cancer.
foco_tubi 8 hours ago [-]
Increased melanin provides some protection against burns, but it doesn’t make you immune. There’s also the aspect of UV damage without burns, which is still harmful and is not affected by melanin levels.
pazimzadeh 4 hours ago [-]
that's his point. anyone can get sunburned, and almost anyone can prevent sunburn through gradual exposure. except albinos, who are especially susceptible.
melanin is also not the only factor in preventing sunburn/cancer. there are many repair pathways and genes, which are present to differing levels in various populations.
SoftTalker 7 hours ago [-]
The same is true for me, a white person of northern European heritage. If I have a few weeks and time to work at building up a tan, I can get to the point where I won't burn. I did this during the pandemic when I was home all day. I would go out and lie in the sun, starting at 15 minutes, turn over, go another 15 minutes, and go back inside. Increased the time as my skin darkened. Felt nice, never burned.
deaton 6 hours ago [-]
I don't know about that. I'm a fairly tanned individual, but where I live, in Texas, if I spend all day in the sun, I'm getting sunburned bad everywhere.
bluGill 6 hours ago [-]
That "if" makes me understand that spending all day in the sun is not something you normally do. I've been told by others who live in Texas that you can build up tolerance and spend all day in the sun.
Naturally darker skin does not automatically provide sunburn protection. It is spending time in the sun that adds the missing part that provide that protection. I don't know how this differs from dark skin, but I've seen it myself.
Note that my claims are only about sunburn. The article/topic is skin cancer which may well have different factors from sunburn.
petesergeant 7 hours ago [-]
Fascinating. Now come and try that on the Arabian peninsula and see how you get on
bluGill 6 hours ago [-]
Are you paying for my mid life crisis? Otherwise my boss expects me back in the office before I could build up the needed tolerance (I'm expecting this to take a month) such that I'd expect to spend all day in the sun without burning.
Georgelemental 8 hours ago [-]
That's the thing about traditions and Chesterton's fences, you don't need to know why they work for them to work.
_joel 7 hours ago [-]
People were aware of heatstroke and sunstroke before the Victorians. There's biblical references to heatstroke and even in Roman and Greek texts.
9 hours ago [-]
SlightlyLeftPad 5 hours ago [-]
Still very much the case in East Asia.
mhh__ 7 hours ago [-]
The idea that humans were basically retarded prior to about 1901 is a little hubristic
jjk166 4 hours ago [-]
They were no dumber then than in 2026, but they fundamentally had much less access to information. How much do you trust the medical advice of an uneducated person in 2026?
mhh__ 49 minutes ago [-]
How much do you trust the medical advice of a doctor in 2026?
slater 46 minutes ago [-]
how is that remotely comparable?
"Hm, whom to trust, a person who went to university and follow-on education for nigh a decade, oorrrrrrrrrr.... something someone posted on Facebook that just so happens to confirm what my own ignorance told me was likeliest?"
thereforegrin 1 hours ago [-]
actually depends on the age and life experience of the advisor - if it's an old woman I'd be inclined to listen to what she may want to say.
A young MD full of himself? I may be a bit sceptical about his know-it-all attitude.
ardit33 9 hours ago [-]
This is silly.... most of the world didn't live in england.
All cultures (including mine), have a way to warn kids, or adults for not to stay too long in the sun.
From normal sunburn, to feeling light-headenes/fainting due to heat excaustion, etc.
In the winter was the opposite. (stay in the sun to get some sunlight and not get sick).
So, they knew, and had nothing to do with 'class'. Also, they knew some sun was good/beneficial, especially during the winter.
hobojojo 7 hours ago [-]
Pale beauty is a phenomenon across geography. What correlation a society works out is largely lost in the cycles of avoiding the sun being a relative luxury until you get expensive air travel.
ardit33 6 hours ago [-]
Again... you are confusing second order effects, with the primary reason.
We have an old saying "te rafte pika e diellit", may you get a spot, sun spot, aka cancer from the Sun.
People knew excessive sun is unhealthy.... if you could you avoid it during the summer. It was not necessary to make you look 'rich'. Ability to avoid it, meant you were rich. And people wanted to be pale, because you look rich, that is a second order effect, that came because of the original reason (aka, too much sun is unhealthy).
hobojojo 5 hours ago [-]
The correlation looks right so all people who have rituals like telling their children not to look poor really understand and later communicate the truth? Is this true for religious stigmas related to food too?
I think you are retro analyzing and presuming individual intelligence because this collective result looks right to you. Really, some people understand some risks and many people who can follow taboos they can afford are not exactly sure what they would learn first hand and what part is superstition.
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think that was because of UV exposure or anything related. Look at Bedouin tribes even today. They wrap up head to toe, man and woman and child alike, not to avoid tanning but because prolonged exposure to direct infrared will fry you like an egg.
I grew up in the same general region as Wilder, and we sought shade not to avoid sunburn. We were all chestnut brown by the end of summer anyway. It's because the direct sunlight on an August afternoon was brutally hot, and you wanted as little of it to hit your skin as possible.
raverbashing 8 hours ago [-]
Bedouins are literally being chargrilled from both sides, the worse sun on Earth and a mostly perfectly infrared accumulator below them
jihadjihad 9 hours ago [-]
> before the 50s and 60s everyone knew you should cover up and women wore bonnets. That too much sun was bad for you.
I'd say partly true, mostly false. As sibling comment mentions, much of this was driven by fashion and class etc. and not from some fundamental understanding of damaging UV exposure.
Furthermore there was research that was trendy at the time called "heliotherapy" [0] where all sorts of diseases were believed curable by sun exposure, including smallpox, TB, etc.
In retrospect, I wonder if there was a measurable effect on sun exposure creating vitamin D => immune system recovery, especially if the patient were otherwise not outside much?
Like, I doubt that fixing a vitamin D deficiency is going to cure you of smallpox or TB, but could imagine a path where it helped at least.
kaikai 8 hours ago [-]
When I got chickenpox in the 80s my grandma made me sit out in the sun to heal it faster. Heliotherapy lives on!
tialaramex 4 hours ago [-]
That's the right thing for the wrong reason, which can actually significantly forestall figuring out what's actually going on.
Scurvy is like that. They figured out that if you give sailors a ration of fresh fruit juice they don't get scurvy - this works because the fresh fruit juice has Vitamin C and Scurvy is just Vitamin C deficiency. But they didn't know why it worked - why would a cow, a mango, a lettuce, and indeed basically everything else have a chemical in it that humans can't synthesize ? That's crazy. Except, nope, that's really what's going on. At some point an ancestor deleted the synthesis pathway for this chemical, their offspring weren't bothered because fresh literally everything has the chemical anyway, so the deletion stuck around.
At the same time ships get quite a lot faster, travel across the Atlantic is now rapid enough that even if you deliberately abstained from Vitamin C you wouldn't get scurvy, your body hoards many chemicals it needs (a few must be made "fresh" but most can be hoarded) and only develops issues when the hoarded ascorbic acid is exhausted after a few weeks. But they don't know that, and so when they swap a working solution (store fruit, squeeze the juice out, drink fresh juice) for a non-working solution (squeeze the juice, preserve that, drink preserved juice) the apparent results do not change.
Until they do something more extreme. Go to Antarctica, which is incredibly hostile to life anyway, and then stay there for months. Despite your magic preserved fruit juice you get scurvy. The juice wasn't magic, and eventually you will figure out it was the freshness which was magic and from there that there really is a chemical found in cows, mango, lettuce and basically everything alive which we cannot synthesize. Ascorbic acid, Vitamin C.
hibikir 10 hours ago [-]
We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer. A lot of the ads from 70s and 80s talked about how they stopped UVB but let the tanning UVA through! So yes, they didn't burn, but the long term cancer rates exploded, along with all the skin aging.
So it's not that they ignored the all knowledge. I blame most of it on the rather detrimental tech advancement. Like cigarettes with filters: now safer (except you can smoke more now, and the cancer risk is still a disaster)
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
> We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer.
I thought you were going to talk about the ingredients in the cream were carcinogenic themself.
pazimzadeh 4 hours ago [-]
technically UVB is much more tanning than UVA. UVA tans for a short amount of time. UVA penetrates much deeper into the skin though and has few benefits (UVB stimulates Vitamin D synthesis).
quickthrowman 10 hours ago [-]
> We act like people in the past were ignorant but people in the 50s and 60s were just a very special type of arrogant,
I’d be curious to know if tetraethyllead in gasoline has anything to do with people from that time being cavalier about exposure to the sun, or if the science was just not there to make the connection between sun exposure and skin cancer.
raverbashing 8 hours ago [-]
Everybody who's not been raised in a bubble knows the sun burns
It's only recently that we had space for completely retarded ideas like "staying in the sun doesn't hurt you" or "sunscreen causes cancer"
dfee 8 hours ago [-]
> It's only recently that we had space for completely retarded ideas like "staying in the sun doesn't hurt you" or "sunscreen causes cancer"
+1. Also, just to call out, it doesn't need to be _warm_ for you to need sunblock. Even when it's cooler / cloudier out there you can still get skin damage. Look for UV rating rather than temperature. Conversely, it being hot doesn't imply high-UV either.
teh_klev 8 hours ago [-]
This was my experience. Years ago I travelled to New Zealand in what would be their spring time. We stayed in Wanaka but also travelled around Twizel, Tekapo etc.
Although it was pretty sunny with clear blue skies, the air temperature was fairly chilly (shirt, jumper and fleece cold - and I'm Scottish so used to cold weather) and I started to burn. I was warned about this, and the probability of high UV exposure at altitude by the locals and family, and was advised to apply a high factor sunblock whilst roaming around the higher elevations of New Zealand's South Island, which I did.
jjice 11 hours ago [-]
I didn't know about the UV index or what it meant until like three years ago. It blows my mind I went that long without understanding. It was actually wonderful to learn that I could just see if I needed sunblock based on a 0-10 scale.
We never wore sunscreen as kids because we didn't burn. I probably have had three sunburns in my life. Learned once I became an adult that that wasn't sound logic...
Barbing 11 hours ago [-]
I think the Apple Watch or the Weather app or something finally taught me UV index about the same time. Has this information always been readily available? Similarly mind blown about it.
NamTaf 7 hours ago [-]
In Australia in at least the 00s, possibly the 90s, I remember it being reported during the weather forecast on the 6pm nightly news.
But Australia has always had a famously robust sun health education programme
al_borland 3 hours ago [-]
I got the worst sunburn of my life while skiing in Colorado. I wasn’t wearing goggles or anything on my face, and the sun plus the reflection off the snow was brutal. I didn’t notice it when I was out there, but the next morning I wasn’t able to open my eyes. Lesson learned.
senordevnyc 9 hours ago [-]
I’ve always wondered about this. I have fair skin, and I tend to burn somewhat easily in very sunny environments like the beach.
However, I’ve never gotten so much as a whisper of sunburn / suntan / anything on an actually cloudy day where sun wasn’t hitting me directly. Is the damage a different type that’s imperceptible? Or is this a public health comms strategy where they assume people will see a single cloud in the sky and decide it’s fine to skip sunscreen, so they talk about how you should slather yourself with sunscreen 24/7, even if the sun is obscured?
matsemann 4 hours ago [-]
Or your behavior is different on a cloudy day? More covered in clothes, not sitting still in the sun at the beach all day etc.
Insanity 6 hours ago [-]
The damaging part of sunlight is the UV (Ultraviolet) spectrum. This penetrates clouds more easily than the visible-spectrum light.
So sun obscured != low UV. It will block some of it though.
kaikai 8 hours ago [-]
I’ve gotten visibly sunburned on cloudy/foggy days, where it was completely overcast. You may have gotten lucky.
rootusrootus 7 hours ago [-]
IIRC, certain types of hazy high clouds can actually make the UV exposure worse. Personally, I got the worst sunburn of my life on a cloudy day.
ashf023 9 hours ago [-]
I think the point is just about temperature. I've experienced this out on lakes in the northern US for example. It's sunny but not like a tropical beach, and maybe even a little chilly. But you'll definitely get burnt without sunscreen
philsnow 9 hours ago [-]
People who are new to skiing/snowboarding are often surprised that their faces get sunburned, because of course it's cold and so how could they get burned
rootusrootus 7 hours ago [-]
And snow makes it worse by reflecting.
esseph 9 hours ago [-]
Geography has a lot to do with it as well. Proximity to the equator, altitude, etc.
redsocksfan45 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jimnotgym 6 hours ago [-]
My mother always covered up and always made us kids cover up. She still died of melanoma. Sun may increase the risk, but sun cream doesn't make it impossible. Cancer has no friends.
Well done to the drug researchers. I have my fingers crossed someone else gets to avoid this
pazimzadeh 4 hours ago [-]
skin grows/regenerates at a rapid pace, which means mutations (mistakes in DNA replication) are naturally likely to happen there than in slow-growing tissue. skin cells and the immune system are constantly self-surveying and nipping these in the buds, under normal conditions. but there are things that can affect this process.
a recent study of 2 million people in ontario showed that both high-sun and low-sun exposed people had higher risk of melanoma than people with moderate exposure.
another explanation is that as much as you can try to cover up, occasionally you may slip up, and going from extreme low-exposure to intense sun is especially bad, because your repair pathways are not primed, skin is untanned, etc..
in conclusion, extreme low or high sun exposure is bad. at the beginning of the summer you should gradually exposure yourself, and then exposure yourself daily but not overly, for the rest of the year.
shpx 5 hours ago [-]
There's also the effect that sunscreen makes you spend more time in the sun than if you didn't use sunscreen because you think you're "protected".
anthomtb 5 hours ago [-]
You are saying that, even if you wear sunscreen and avoid sun burn, the UV exposure will still potentially lead to skin cancer?
I'd like to see the primary research backing that up. Or be told how I misinterpreted your statement.
Cabal 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, 100%. It's the same reason that my kids are able to tan through the same sunscreen application regimen that leaves me pale.
Source: My Mohs surgeon. And 3 skin cancer surgeries (so far).
pazimzadeh 4 hours ago [-]
there is also that anything that blocks UV (sunscreen, windows, etc) by definition blocks UVB first and then UVA, and UVA is the one that penetrates most deeply and has few benefits
Tangurena2 8 hours ago [-]
My parents were nudists. So I spent a bunch of 60s % 70s getting sunburn. I bet that even baby oil would have cut some of that down.
root-parent 6 hours ago [-]
>> This is great news...
No this is insane news, the world is crazy and dumb. Must be all these LLMs. Stock up more than 150%, based on totally unpublished data and an X post...
- The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial. The phase 2 was open label, had only 50 controls, and its randomization was disrupted. Meaning 9 patients were reassigned and the final 37 were no longer randomized.
Its primary RFS result was p=0.053 two-sided, with the 95% CI crossing 1. It also used an unusually permissive one-sided alpha of 0.10, and much of the later "confirmation" is just longer follow up of those same 157 patients...
- This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release. They have not published hazard ratio, or confidence interval, their event counts or survival curves.
- They met the endpoint as used in the press release means nothing, until they publish the actual 3 data, so my money is at the end this will be a kind of marginal effect that researchers will struggle to reproduce for years
Another type of study that will take 2 to 3 years to validate or dismiss, in the meanwhile stock is up 150%....
jryle70 4 hours ago [-]
150% increase is because it started from a low point. Moderna's stock lost 94% value after Covid. Stock price speaks to investors' enthusiasm, there is no algorithm.
> This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release.
Can you find a case where a press release after phase 3 was later proven wrong? They do have the data, and most likely the data is positive. They're talking about FDA's approval as soon as late 2027, which is fairly soon.
Do you know what would be more dramatic than stock gaining 150%? that'd be the stock crashing if the press release turned out to be wrong. Follow the money if you are skeptical. See who's selling.
> The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial.
There are 1,100 patients in phase 3. More evidence that they're pretty confident.
This is great news.
internetter 5 hours ago [-]
the stock is up 150% because if Moderna has indeed cured cancer, the stock is worth many magnitudes more than that. It's presumably based on the probability this report is indeed as promising as it is at face value. If Moderna had announced "we are 100% sure cancer is cured" the stock would've gone up much more
eli_gottlieb 6 hours ago [-]
For what it's worth, AFAICT Moderna and other such high-tech biopharma stocks are way too sensitive to the news cycle and not nearly enough to scientific fundamentals, so I took the opportunity of having it up 150% to sell mine off.
paulpauper 10 hours ago [-]
melanoma , unlike the others, has a much weaker link to sun exposure. its why melanoma often appear in areas with no sun exposure
> Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022
> An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022
UVR = Ultraviolet radiation
Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least:
> The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/
tl;dr ~80% of Cutaneous melanoma cases are attributable to UV exposure.
bonsai_spool 10 hours ago [-]
Please be careful and charitable in reading others' words, especially as they relate to scientific topics.
OP did not say that melanoma has no sun exposure risk but that it is lower than the risks associated with other cutaneous cancers (e.g., SCC and BCC) and it would seem that's true based on the very short search I performed.
Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. It's still a misleading comment, in my opinion.
pessimizer 8 hours ago [-]
> Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC.
In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side reply to a culture-war topic.
Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist.
It's fine to see debate, but this is not debate. At most, consistent daily sunscreen use is associated with a 30-50% reduction in melanoma, and some of the ingredients in US sunscreens are themselves associated with cancer.
What would be helpful is a link to a study showing a general reduction in melanomas during a general increase in the use of sunscreen. I'd be able to point that out to friends who questioned me about the efficacy of using it.
edit: that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on. Now to mention this fact has become "bizarre." Can't wait until it becomes "unhinged."
stephen_g 2 hours ago [-]
I think the problem is that it takes 30 years for the effects to start showing.
This data [1] shows incidence of melanoma by the age of 30 dropping by half in Australia, presumably as a result of a sun safety campaign that started in the late 80s (not just encouraging sunscreen but also more shade, hats, covering up, etc.). Yet melanoma rates here in general increase but it’s more and more skewed towards the older.
>Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist.
the comment you are replying to is HedonicEscal8r's first comment in this comment chain.
>that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on
no... it is correcting your comment that is accusing HedonicEscal8r of having multiple comments in this chain. HedonicEscal8r was not the one to make the comment that you describe as an "unrelated accusation" to "silence the other side".
common courtesy would be to say "oops, i didn't read the usernames, my bad" instead of accusing someone else entirely of "trying to snowball into a pile on" for calling you out on the mistake.
3 hours ago [-]
john_strinlai 3 hours ago [-]
pessimizer misattributes a comment to someone who didn't write it. i mention it, get accused of "piling on", and then get downvoted. hn can be so fucking weird.
pigeof 8 hours ago [-]
The criticism and correction were polite, helpful, and appropriate.
The original comment is misleading. Your reply is bizarre, and seems to deliberately misread the original comment, the reply, and the context.
jjk166 3 hours ago [-]
The criticism was both impolite and against HN rules.
The reply was reiterating HN rules, as well as adding data supporting the original statement.
bonsai_spool 8 hours ago [-]
> misread the original comment
By pointing out that it is true using a reference?
> the reply
The reply misunderstood the first comment and went on to discuss something a)interesting but b) not germane to whether melanoma is the skin cancer with the highest sun exposure risk.
I have no idea what you mean by context as this small discussion is quite self-contained. Think of this as making sure everyone realizes two homophones actually are distinct words.
toephu2 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Noaidi 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
anonymars 11 hours ago [-]
Article: "two forms of rare melanoma are not caused by exposure to the sun.."
> Most skin cancers are not a big deal, and even Melanomas can vanish on their own
PSA: don't take medical advice from internet comments
Noaidi 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
addisonl 10 hours ago [-]
> This also means that you are likely to get melenoma form something other than the sun.
Quantifiably false statement. Incredibly dangerous misinformation to spread—shame on you.
> Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022
> An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022
UVR = Ultraviolet radiation
Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least:
> The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%,
from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/
anonymars 10 hours ago [-]
Your reading comprehension is way off. The article says "Each year in Australia, up to 420 people are diagnosed with acral or mucosal melanomas. They affect people of all ethnic backgrounds, and are the most common forms of melanoma in people with very dark skin."
That is a discussion of specific subtypes of melanoma. You've turned that into a general statement about melanoma:
> not all skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, and this is more true for Melenoma which occur both more frequently in darker skinned people and in place where there is little sun exposure.
These are "Two rare ... forms of melanoma" not "melanoma as a whole." The article does not say melanoma as a whole is more frequent in darker-skinned people and in places with little sun exposure. Those two subtypes are.
> BCC ... can cause significant local tissue damage if left untreated. Most cases are linked to chronic sun exposure, especially in fair-skinned individuals.
> While it often remains localized at first, SCC can invade deeper tissues and, in some cases, metastasize to lymph nodes or other organs. Risk factors include cumulative sun exposure, a history of sunburns, and immunosuppression.
> While not all skin cancers can be prevented, effective sun protection and healthy habits can greatly reduce your risk for basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma.
That does not support "most skin cancers are not a big deal"
"Whilst some studies reported an association with improved survival ... others did not find any significant association, and some even reported worse outcomes in patients whose tumors showed regression"
You seem to have read this as "melanoma just goes away and the problem is gone" rather than "the primary tumor can recede, and in that case survival odds are somewhat better by a few percentage points (but actually worse for Stage III patients!)"
Noaidi 6 hours ago [-]
5-year relative survival rates for melanoma skin cancer is 95%. That is all that matters.
"Melanoma is one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer, with more than 330,000 new cases diagnosed worldwide in 2022."
Saying melanoma is the deadliest forms of skin cancer is not revealing anything and is a scare tactic. In 2022, there were approximately 60,000 deaths worldwide due to melanoma. A rare cancer with 18% death rate is not high compared to the others. The deadliest cancers include lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. These cancers have the lowest survival rates and account for a significant number of cancer-related deaths.
But I will wait for the upcoming complications and the worse 5 year all cause mortality rate in these patients.
anonymars 6 hours ago [-]
Question for you: what is the goal of these comments? What is it would you like people to do or think differently after reading what you've written?
I'll go first: my hope is that someone who has read what I've written will be more likely to take seriously something suspicious they see on their skin rather than ignore it as unimportant, and be more inclined to take seriously protection from sun exposure when possible
Noaidi 4 hours ago [-]
My goal is to 1) not reward these companies by over inflating phase 3 clinical trial outcomes and 2) to not fear a skin cancer diagnosis and 3) not live your life in a bubble while polluting the world with sunscreen.
Sun exposure does not cause skin cancer. It only increases the risk of skin cancer in some people. Look at the ROI on people's behavior and it makes no sense. Are we actually causing more damage by using all this sunscreen and the plastic bottles it comes in and lowering everyone's vitamin D levels?
Sunscreen was widely used in the 70's and skin cancer rates keep going up. It's useless.
anonymars 4 hours ago [-]
There are truths in there, but you seem to be looking only for evidence that supports your beliefs (and misreading evidence against your beliefs) instead of tailoring your beliefs based on evidence. Additionally you make blanket, definitive assertions like "sun exposure does not cause skin cancer" which no one should be listening to
Multiple things can be true at the same time:
1. Skin cancer can be successfully treated if found and removed early
2. Vitamin D is healthy and necessary, but at the same time too much sun exposure is harmful. That harm depends on different factors (like skin tone)
3. Some kinds of sunscreen might be problematic or bad for the environment, but there are different kinds of sunscreen (mineral-based, reef-safe)
4. There are multiple ways to mitigate sun exposure, not just sunscreen (avoid peak UV times, wear sun-protective clothing). Mitigation doesn't mean "complete avoidance"
5. Sun exposure is not the only cause of skin cancer, but it is a cause of skin cancer and a common one at that
Noaidi 3 hours ago [-]
I did not say that the sun does not increase the risk of skin cancer. I did say it does not cause skin cancer. Do you understand the distinction I’m making? “Cause” can only be determined when the event has already happened. And even in the case of the sun causing someone’s skin cancer, it is not the only variable.
Yes, however the trial succeeded. But by "how much", is not yet released. This trial was not against placebo, but the already existing, and effective Keytruda treatment.
cogman10 10 hours ago [-]
I believe both were done with Keytruda. Control was Keytruda without the mRNA treatment.
So this should answer the question of "how much better is this with the best we currently have".
My father is currently dying of malignant melanoma with brain metastasis...
I wish this treatment was available a few years ago.
leetrout 4 hours ago [-]
My dad died 30 years ago after it spread to his liver. He was in the study at duke for what is today the standard treatment line for immunotherapy. I hope he was able to help. He died 9 months after his diagnosis.
Enjoy the time you have with him now and be grateful for all the years you've had. Nothing is going to make the loss of a parent "OK" and it will hurt no matter if you see it coming like you are or it's a surprise.
Remember to breathe.
pfdietz 8 hours ago [-]
Immune therapy didn't help? Darn.
Gibbon1 7 hours ago [-]
Immune therapy is hit or miss. Friends lung cancer was exquisitely sensitive to it. Stage 4 to no sign of disease. Another friend with melanoma immune therapy didn't seem to help at all.
Melanoma is usually completely resistant to traditional cancer drugs. So that sometimes immune therapy works is very welcome.
exolymph 8 hours ago [-]
That is devastating. How are you doing?
onlyrealcuzzo 8 hours ago [-]
I'm so sorry to hear that, but thank you for sharing your story to highlight the importance of this!
mancerayder 1 hours ago [-]
How are BioNtech's trials doing?
Are these two companies the ones to cure cancer (for the rich, being that these therapies require custom bio engineering).
nearbyyak 11 hours ago [-]
Huge, uplifting, news, hope the study will bear further fruit. Considering that 90% of all clinical trials fail, it's good to read about a truly promising one for once.
danjl 10 hours ago [-]
Will this targeted approach be beneficial to other cancer types? Is there any data or theory about this class of drugs as a more general therapy?
HedonicEscal8r 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, mRNA vaccines are promising for many but not all cancer types, and there are many ongoing clinical trials. There's also a lot we yet don't know about how to design them.
One of the leading problems is that we don't know how to pick the right neoantigens (mutant cancer proteins) which can trigger the optimal immune response.
Moderna used a simple heuristic, "how likely is this antigen to show up on the cell surface?" which makes sense, since an antigen has to show up on the cell surface for the immune system to see it. But there's so much missing from this model, and we just don't have enough data. Failures in clinical trials of mRNA vaccines may well be caused by this problem. (Yes, this is a good problem for AI, if we can get enough data).
ww520 59 minutes ago [-]
mRNA is a general technique for targeted cancer therapy. It's the message RNA containing the instructions from a gene to create a specific protein. It's much easier to work with, reprogrammed, manufactured, and delivered. There're a number of approaches to use mRNA against cancer cells. One is using cancer related antigens, similar to the vaccine approach. mRNA is programmed to generate the antigen proteins in the body, which are attached to the cancer cells. The body's T-cells can then attack the tagged cancer cells.
The problem now is finding the correct antigens targeting the cancer cell type. Cancer cells are similar to health cells. You don't want to program a mRNA to generate antigen proteins that target health cells, which causes autoimmune problems.
paulpauper 10 hours ago [-]
Individualized immune cancer therapy has been touted as the next big thing for half a century. It's nothing new, and with few exceptions, such as skin cancer, has failed to yield much. scientists, for decades, have tired to harness the immune system to attackcancer and it almost never works.
cogman10 9 hours ago [-]
> and with few exceptions
Those few exceptions have been monumental in how they've changed cancer treatment. Skin cancer has been particularly well treated with immunotherapy, but other cancers have also benefited from the exact same research and drugs (as it turns out, the specific mutations the immunotherapies like Keytruda target express in other cancers). The reason skin cancer gets so much attention is because it's one of the most commonly diagnosed and treated cancers. (Colon is more common, I believe, but it often doesn't get detected. Get your colonoscopies folks).
It has moved fast enough that I've heard from multiple oncologists that the all 5 year survivability numbers are dated because the treatments are newer than the studies.
We've come a LONG way in a very short period in terms of cancer treatment. It still sucks, but not as much as it once did.
pfdietz 8 hours ago [-]
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment has been revolutionized by the checkpoint inhibitors (as well as some other drugs targeting specific mutations).
bonsai_spool 10 hours ago [-]
> Individualized immune cancer therapy has been touted as the next big thing for half a century. It's nothing new, and with few exceptions, such as skin cancer, has failed to yield much. scientists, for decades, have tired to harness the immune system to attackcancer and it almost never works.
"Almost never" is doing a lot of work. You may be aware that most drugs fail over the course of development and human trials?
Anyway, checkpoint inhibitor therapy is a massive boon to oncology and was only brought into widespread use over the past 15 years.
preg_match 6 hours ago [-]
Every cancer is different. Immunotherapy is highly effective, even curative, for some cancers. For my cancer, chemotherapy is curative, while other cancer's just shrug chemotherapy off like it's nothing.
Having a plethora of drugs and treatments is vital because cancer is not "one thing". Each type of cancer will respond better to some treatments than others.
HedonicEscal8r 10 hours ago [-]
Personalized mRNA vaccines are in fact, extremely new, and only made possible by recent advances across multiple fields. This comment reveals a total lack of basic understanding on this topic.
cogman10 9 hours ago [-]
I believe the comment was talking specifically about immunotherapy rather than personalized mRNA. But I'd agree it's still misinformed as immunotherapy has been a game changer across multiple cancers.
HedonicEscal8r 9 hours ago [-]
u/danjl was originally asking about "this class of drugs", which is more reasonably interpreted as referring to personalized mRNA vaccines rather than the much broader concept of (personalized or not) immunotherapy.
The comment is wrong because it's stupid. Just because we've known that personalized immunotherapy was a promising idea for a long time, and have been trying it with the limited tools we had (CAR T being the poster child, and while an incredible advancement for blood cancers and many other diseases, it is notoriously dangerous and expensive), does not mean we had the technology to accomplish it. Today's results are only possible because of recent advancements in multiple fields, and to respond with "they've tried immunotherapy for decades" is profoundly ignorant. You may as well say, "scientists have been trying to cure cancer for years."
ChickeNES 7 hours ago [-]
> This comment reveals a total lack of basic understanding on this topic.
My thoughts as well, Keytruda alone has been a miracle to many many people at this point (quoting GP: "scientists, for decades, have tired [sic] to harness the immune system to attack cancer and it almost never works."), I frequently get ads for local CAR-T centers (unthinkable a little over a decade ago)
consumer451 12 hours ago [-]
This appears to be a potentially huge win for health. The market has Moderna up 153% at time of writing, which is some sort of validation I suppose.
For a while (like a year+ ago), the shares were trading around cash value. But they were burning through cash. Happy it’s worked out for them!
consumer451 4 hours ago [-]
Many people, including myself, often take pot-shots at "big pharma." But, this just seems like a win-win, for the org and humanity. They believed in their tech, rode it out, and we all came out the better for it.
matteoraso 3 hours ago [-]
Often the case with big pharma. I for one will never join in on the populist backlash against those that make livesaving pharmaceuticals for us.
consumer451 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this is a win. US pricing for insulin and asthma inhalers, not so much.
6 hours ago [-]
Jyaif 12 hours ago [-]
oh nice. If it goes up another 100% I may not lose money on this stock anymore.
bpodgursky 11 hours ago [-]
And if it doubles after that, I may even beat a passive S&P 500 investment.
andxor 10 hours ago [-]
You know many stocks have done better than the SP500, right?
smarf 10 hours ago [-]
invest only in the ones that are going to go up - why didn't i think of that?!
bpodgursky 9 hours ago [-]
I am in fact aware that some of my stock investments have beaten the market while others have underperformed the market.
MRNA, as it happens, is the latter.
consumer451 12 hours ago [-]
I mean, this appears to be validation of mRNA in general, right?
ianlevesque 11 hours ago [-]
Saving a couple million people in the pandemic wasn’t validation enough?
consumer451 11 hours ago [-]
100%. What I meant to say was that this proves that it wasn't somehow a one trick pony.
I don't know if that counts as the same "trick" or not as it's another antiviral vaccine. Not that I disagree with you.
I read that this mRNA flu vaccine can be more effective then the regular annual flu shot, simply because the time to create it is shorter, therefor the guess at what strains will circulate that year is more accurate.
But it is yet more validation. mRNA technology is here, get used to it.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
consumer451 9 hours ago [-]
> Well it did give more than a couple million people myocarditis as a side effect, so there's that.
You are absolutely incorrect with the thrust of your comment. This is a great opportunity to find out where you heard that, and ignore that source going forward.
The largest study I can find has 536k subjects. It shows that mRNA vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people who had COVID had myocarditis >10x more often, and it was a worse long-term form.
Couple million myocarditis? Do you have a reputable source for that (sorry, RFK Jr doesn’t count)
ryan_n 10 hours ago [-]
Would love to see a source for this, but I'm assuming you don't have one and are just spreading FUD due to your political beliefs...
Closest thing I could find was a little over 15,000 people in Europe who got myocarditis (also includes pericarditis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10746454/). Out of millions (hundreds of millions?) that received the vaccine. Please stop doing what your doing. It's pretty shit.
SideburnsOfDoom 10 hours ago [-]
> Please stop doing what your doing
Yes, and it's worse than that for the parent commenter, the unvaccinated population also got some cases of myocarditis - often after Covid. And they got myocarditis at a higher rate than the vaccinated.
consumer451 10 hours ago [-]
Thank you for making that point. This is the truth. This whole conversation drives me nuts, because all the data is now available. The increase in risk for myocarditis in non-vaccinated people is staggering! (>10x higher risk!)
Example study:
> The incidence of pericarditis and myocarditis in the total population exposed to at least one dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was 5/100,000 (CI95%:3 to 8 per 100,000), compared to 70/100,000 (CI95%: 66 to 92 per 100,000) in those who were not vaccinated.
The study monitored a total population of 536,448 people. This is real data.
I mean, the question is almost always about whether it's economical or not, right? Whether you can find diseases it's efficacious to treat with this mechanism, and prove it (trials are expensive).
paulpauper 10 hours ago [-]
not really a huge win. It's going to cost taxpayers significancy and may not improve survival much or total life expectancy . The stock is way overextended, assuming it even works well enough to be a commercial success. History has shown this is seldom the case. I would short it if wasn't so expensive and risky to do so. They would not even specify how much it improved the 5 year survival rate.
bonsai_spool 10 hours ago [-]
> not really a huge win. It's going to cost taxpayers significancy and may not improve survival much or total life expectancy . The stock is way overextended. It's a long way from anything that can be used on patients, assuming it even works well enough to be a commercial success. History has shown this is seldom the case. I would short it if wasn't so expensive and risky to do so.
Buddy, this is a phase 3 trial. This is about as close as you can get to "anything that can be used on patients" without already being approved.
It is clear that you don't have experience in this area.
I think the "expected value" was priced in, but regardless of the result, this trial would move the stock price towards that direction.
Biotech is one of the very very very few areas of the stockmarket where specialist knowledge generates alpha.
Trolling through random biotechs, learning about their tech, and investing in the most promising applications of that tech in the most impactful areas is something that happens somewhat on publicly traded markets. With tech, most of that happens pre-IPO.
henry2023 12 hours ago [-]
Even if you were to optimally price in all available information you still have uncertainty of what will actually happen. i.e. A 1 dollar coin flip has an expected value of 50c before it’s thrown and it will collapse either to zero or to one after the uncertainty is resolved.
bluGill 11 hours ago [-]
I don't believe the efficient market hypothesis. However even if you do, new information has arrived and that will affect the price.
pipolo 11 hours ago [-]
Hard to price in the political factors now involved in Moderna's success or lack of success.
quickthrowman 9 hours ago [-]
It was priced in, the share price prior to the news being released was taking into account a probability measurement of the trial succeeding or failing. You can’t price in both options of a binary outcome simultaneously, so part of the equity price was functionally equivalent to a call option on the outcome of the drug trial that only resolved after the trial results are announced.
It’s similar to the situation where a company puts out a public offer to buy another company at say, $50 a share on a day that the acquisition target is trading at $40/share.
If the stock of the target company is trading at $46/share, the market is pricing in the probability of the acquisition not happening. If the market knew the acquisition would happen with 100% certainty, the price of the target company shares would be equal to the buyout share price offer. You can assume the risk of the acquisition not happening by purchasing shares at $46, and if it does end up going through, you earn $4 a share from assuming that risk.
epistasis 12 hours ago [-]
Ever since I first heard of them a decade ago, it seemed that mRNA therapeutic vaccines were going to be the next wave of massive improvements in care. It's taken a bit longer than I had expected, and it's not that mRNA is the only way to make these sorts of vaccines, it's just so much better than the alternatives.
I'm very very excited to see what comes next.
kinj28 9 hours ago [-]
My father has gastric melonama and pretty much last few days left — does someone with knowledge know if this vaccine can be of any help? Or any registry available?
bell-cot 8 hours ago [-]
Deepest sympathies, and I'm no oncologist - but I think that'd be like trying to patch the hull of the Titanic after her stern has lifted out of the water. So many cascading failures are in motion by then that saving him really isn't possible.
agumonkey 8 hours ago [-]
Some say that mRNA therapies are getting better and better on a wider range of tumor types, anybody from the industry can confirm ?
ricardobayes 10 hours ago [-]
According to Gemini, Moderna uses machine learning to speed up sequence selection and mRNA optimization. After all, this is not a mass-produced vaccine, but a personalized one.
>Postscript: Our Secretary of Health and Human Services of course cancelled $500 million in mRNA vaccine R&D contracts (22 different programs) last year, and cited a pile of misinformation (and cluelessly misunderstood research citations) to justify it. Our Director of the National Institutes of Health was apparently just fine with this decision and cited mRNA vaccines’ alleged failure to “earn public trust” as one of his reasons, along with public statements that “the mRNA platform is no longer viable”. I have a number of suggestions for each of these individuals and their supporters about how they might spend the rest of their day, and will be glad to send details if they contact me.
Noaidi 11 hours ago [-]
I for one would like to see the data rather than a press release. Is this even serious? A press release with no link to outside twitter?
I feel like everything companies, and presidents, say now is directly geared to triggering AI trades.
The only thing they are looking at with this drug is people living one more month over existing drugs.
THIS IS NOTHING.
"The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab,"
The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab, 95% CI, 0.46-0.72 for 2-week group and 0.47-0.72 for 3-week group, respectively). The estimated 6-month PFS rates for the KEYTRUDA and ipilimumab arms were 47.3 percent, 46.4 percent and 26.5 percent, respectively. One-year OS for KEYTRUDA was 74.1 percent (2-week group) and 68.4 percent (3-week group) compared to 58.2 percent for ipilimumab (HR 0.63 [95% CI, 0.47-0.83, P=0.00052] for the 2-week group and HR 0.69 [95% CI, 0.52-0.90, P=0.00358] for the 3-week group). At the time of analysis, median overall survival was not reached in any treatment group.
calebkaiser 11 hours ago [-]
1. That's not what progression-free survival means.
2. I don't think AI was mentioned once in this press release.
3. This drug was approved for trial in 2014, so if it had something to do with deep learning, that would actually be a massive announcement.
4. The paragraph immediately following the one you clipped talks about Overall Response Rate (ORR) and throughout the release they discuss Overall Survival (OS).
5. This is not "NOTHING" in statistical terms, but even more so to people with melanoma.
axus 7 hours ago [-]
My interpretation of "triggering AI trades" is about tricking AI into buying stock, not tricking people into buying AI stocks.
HedonicEscal8r 10 hours ago [-]
Interjecting with a fact. Moderna described the neoantigen immunogenicity prediction algorithm they used to design the vaccines as “a deterministic machine learning (ML) algorithm,” so it may be a small neural network or more traditional algorithm, probably not deep learning.
calebkaiser 8 hours ago [-]
Sorry--I was unclear. I was specifically responding to the OP's "CEOs these days want to join the AI hype wave" claim. My point was that the "hype wave" OP is referencing is really about deep learning, not what we think of as traditional statistical learning. Even the dedicated medical AI startups of that era, like BenevolentAI, were still doing traditional ML in 2014. So if Moderna really was trying to join the "AI hype train" and announce a deep learning result with this treatment, they'd be announcing that they successfully trained a deep neural network for drug discovery 12 years ago.
Noaidi 7 hours ago [-]
1. That's not what progression-free survival means.
I was not pointing to PFS as OS.
2. I don't think AI was mentioned once in this press release.
I did not say it was. I said it was written FOR AI trading algorithms to read and invest on.
4. The paragraph immediately following the one you clipped talks about Overall Response Rate (ORR) and throughout the release they discuss Overall Survival (OS).
Someone noted this was an earlier study. The newest study does not even have data out and yet here we are, investing on a press release.
5. This is not "NOTHING" in statistical terms, but even more so to people with melanoma.
You are talking to someone whose father died of pancreatic cancer. "Pancreatic cancer has a higher mortality rate compared to melanoma, with an estimated 52,740 deaths from pancreatic cancer in 2026, while melanoma has a significantly lower death rate. Additionally, the 5-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only 13.7%, compared to higher survival rates for melanoma."
What they did for my father was worse than nothing.
preg_match 6 hours ago [-]
Yes every cancer is different, responds to different therapy, and with different survival rates. However, cancer treatment, as a whole, works. Oncologists do not prescribe incredibly intense treatments like chemotherapy out of nowhere. Chemotherapy is often not curative. Instead, it's used to both prolong life and improve quality of life.
Dying from late-stage cancer is often painful and miserable. It might be shocking, but getting just a few more months from chemo can provide a greater quality of life. Keyword can. Every oncologist is different with different recommendations, and they explain the risks very concretely. There is always an option to refuse treatment, but bear in mind it's not just about how quick you die. It's also about how much that dying sucks.
Noaidi 5 hours ago [-]
They told my father Chemo woudl add six months on his six month estimated lifespan. He died in two months cause the chemo blocked his liver. My sister in law was a chemo nurse and begged him not to get it. He died on loads of morphine. His last words were "It's all a scam!"
Sorry, you have no idea. Talk to a chemo nurse.
preg_match 3 hours ago [-]
Talk to a chemo nurse? I've gotten two different chemo regimens. Yes, I know chemo has a risk because all medicine has a risk. I'm sorry for what happened to your father, but that doesn't fucking mean chemo is a scam. It saves lives, I should know.
matteoraso 3 hours ago [-]
Huh? How would chemo "block his liver"? Do you mean that he had a liver metastasis that the chemo didn't help with?
A friend's sister beat colon cancer over ten years ago but now is having liver problems that took a while to pin down. They warned her she'd probably die in a couple years from the cancer without Chemo, but would have this risk long term and it recently showed up.
Noaidi 3 hours ago [-]
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hyperhello 11 hours ago [-]
No it isn’t. They did a test with great specificity and got undeniable P values. Now they can refine the action and start saving people. This is a huge, huge win.
lakhim 10 hours ago [-]
you're also looking at a different, older study. Keytruda is a little strange in that it has a very long tail in survivorship, works best in certain cases, and median PFS isn't a really great metric.
toephu2 9 hours ago [-]
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jaumesnts 11 hours ago [-]
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jambalaya8 12 hours ago [-]
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tnel77 12 hours ago [-]
Why?
jambalaya8 12 hours ago [-]
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consumer451 12 hours ago [-]
> (and yes, I have a background in this)
Care to share what that is exactly?
jambalaya8 11 hours ago [-]
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jimbo808 12 hours ago [-]
People were assured that COVID vaccine mRNA would disappear within days and the spike protein would short-lived. Yet Yale-led researchers later detected circulating S1 and full-length spike as late as 709 days after vaccination.
They also left the public in the dark about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially in young males, many of whom experienced permanent heart tissue damage.
That is a massive gap between what the public was told and what later evidence found. If a technology makes your cells produce a biologically active protein, regulators should establish where it goes, how long it can persist, and what prolonged exposure does before mass deployment.
> People were assured that COVID vaccine mRNA would disappear within days and the spike protein would short-lived
which is still the case, even in the Yale study.
> That is a massive gap between what the public was told and what later evidence found.
there is an even larger gap between basic epidemiology and what the public understands.
Hard science is difficult to communicate on a good day, on a global pandemic with quacks getting tons of airtime and multiple labs finding conflicting results (due to speed to publish and bad experimental parameters) I would say that was communicated by health experts was surprisingly valid and accurate.
estearum 10 hours ago [-]
+1 the public health apparatuses' actual statements were impressively correct even if you don't account for the underlying uncertainty at the time.
Where public health officials "failed" was not having a megaphone loud enough to drown out the game of telephone that most people (as these comment threads consistently show) were actually hearing information through.
Simplest example: People will say that public health officials told them "masks don't work." But no! Only one person did, and that was USSG Jerome Adams (who wasn't credible nor a major player to begin with). What public health officials said was "we do not know if masks work," which is a more nuanced but completely accurate statement.
Arkhaine_kupo 8 hours ago [-]
> : People will say that public health officials told them "masks don't work." But no! Only one person did
I think Fauci might have had a statement early.
But tbh every other scientist said the opposite, every doctor said the opposite.
If I am not wrong he later admitted that he said it to gain time for the goverment to adquire enough for basic needs like hospitals.
And that is the kind of error that erodes public trust and it was bad advice shared because the american public cannot be trusted to prioritise medical professionals being stocked and because the american gov was unprepared.
But one bad statement, in march of 2020, done for the wrong reasons due to an unprepared goverment voted in by selfish people who cannot be trusted to help others does not deny that the UK had great advice the entire time, so did China, and Spain and Italy and most of the other initial hotbeds. They said "we dont have enough n95 for everyone, please social distance until they are availeble" instead of "masks are not needed".
Despite that, he was the face of a pandemic plan in a goverment alergic to facts and led by a dude who recommended injecting bleach so in that situation, he did as much as you can and is still paying for it.
jambalaya8 10 hours ago [-]
Masks might work but you have to take them off at some point to change them. Or blow your nose, from all of those dead skin cells.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
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estearum 10 hours ago [-]
Take it from someone who has read all of said emails: no, they don't prove that.
jambalaya8 10 hours ago [-]
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estearum 9 hours ago [-]
Finally someone said it! This is exactly why we need to be REMOVING VIAGRA FROM THE MARKET!
There were NO longitudinal studies!
NOTHING looked at psychological effects!
REMOVE VIAGRA TODAY!
jambalaya8 9 hours ago [-]
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tomhow 4 hours ago [-]
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> They also left the public in the dark about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially in young males, many of whom experienced permanent heart tissue damage.
Not true. This was correctly disclosed in the trial results as a super super super tail risk.
Once they realized that the (minuscule) risk could be even further mitigated by simply spacing out the booster schedule, they adjusted that (Feb 2022).
Nobody was "left in the dark"
jambalaya8 11 hours ago [-]
again. over how long.
estearum 11 hours ago [-]
What?
jambalaya8 10 hours ago [-]
the risk of heart issues.
lern_too_spel 11 hours ago [-]
What's more, they found that myocarditis risk was higher in the unvaccinated population after infection. This information didn't get to the so-called "skeptics," who willfully ignored data that didn't fit their conspiracy theory.
>In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (97 [95% CI, 91–99] versus 16 [95% CI, 12–18]).
From your own study you linked. The first comment I ever posted on HN was regarding a similar study where there was no control group whatsoever for unvaccinated people.
I can’t get over the sunk cost reaction to this vaccine. No one who was not immunocompromised should have ever taken it. Period.
And this is just regarding your study.
Remember how the AstraZeneca vaccine (it was called the “Oxford vaccine” before that bad PR) was taken off the market instantly after reports of blood clots.
One can go on endlessly.
estearum 10 hours ago [-]
Let's assume that it's correct that "no one who was not immunocompromised should have ever taken it." (It's not, but let's assume that it is)
Was this knowably true in Q1 2021?
Can you please share the specific, contemporaneously available information that made this knowably true?
If you can't, then it's not "sunk cost" infecting someone else's thinking, it's hindsight bias infecting yours.
jambalaya8 11 hours ago [-]
I also get a kick out of people only looking for side effects they think of as side effects, since they are what people think of as side effects for completely different types of technologies.
estearum 10 hours ago [-]
What?
jambalaya8 6 hours ago [-]
Inspired me to reread some old papers on mRNA, miRNA, siRNA, RNAi from 15+ year ago. There went the day.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Taikhoom10 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah while a positive step, I do not understand a 90% stock increase.
missedthecue 1 hours ago [-]
So they added $30B market cap for a drug that would do by my napkin estimate about ~$7B average annual sales for 20 years as a front line treatment. Based on that alone, $30B in added market cap isn't enough. How much would you pay for $150B in high margin revenue?
But even more is the validation of this new custom MRNA novel cancer treating platform. If you take this data result to be a 'proof of concept', the expected value of the rest of their pipeline is suddenly worth a lot more.
Of course, this is all assuming the data is accurate and the drug gets approved, neither of which are 100% guaranteed.
Plutoberth 7 hours ago [-]
See it as $60B value total among Moderna and Merck for the success of the trial, not 150% increase.
andxor 10 hours ago [-]
Oh yeah? Show me your discounted cash flow analysis.
reenorap 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Someone1234 12 hours ago [-]
> For all the hate I have for the COVID vaccine
Can you clarify that? It saved 100K+ lives even by incredibly conservative estimates, and allowed life to returned to normal at least a year earlier than otherwise.
zulux 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
martythemaniak 11 hours ago [-]
You got RFK because half the population thought they were unique snowflakes who could not abide by the same simple rules as everyone else. The price he'll extract is significant impacts on health, wealth and well-being.
cassidius 11 hours ago [-]
Except that your children are still vectors for getting others sick. Vaccines are there not just for you but your community.
ifyoubuildit 10 hours ago [-]
Vaccines that have a large impact on transmission and infection are there not just for you but for your community.
The covid shots were good against hospitalization and death in older folks, but they were not great at preventing infection or transmission (despite what you may have gleaned from the speakers blaring ads in every public setting for all that time).
You can fall back to the "flooding the hospitals" argument, that works a little better here.
estearum 10 hours ago [-]
You're misinterpreting data here. You are conflating the fact that the clinical trials didn't measure infection/transmission (which is very hard to do in a clinical trial) with the distinct claim that they didn't reduce transmission in reality.
The vaccines were extremely effective at reducing transmission during the first waves of COVID, where such an intervention was most valuable. And due to viral growth dynamics, even small reductions in transmission yield big net outcomes.
Later waves made the vaccine much less effective at reducing transmission, but still highly effective at reducing hospital utilization which is (despite your snarky aside), extremely valuable. Fatality rates doubled when ERs hit full capacity.
ifyoubuildit 7 hours ago [-]
All I'm saying is if you sum up the time (between vaccine release and today) that a person was strongly protected from covid infection and transmission, it's a relatively small portion of that time.
Thats my pushback against gp's argument that you have to give this thing to your young kids to protect me.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
I suspect that you and GP and GGP are talking about different time scales.
Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with.
Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them.
Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them.
I struggle to think of a decision or conversation where the relevant metric is "what % of time from vaccination until today were you protected" and I doubt that's what GP was discussing either.
ifyoubuildit 5 hours ago [-]
> Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them.
Isn't this kinda like saying medicating your children in general is very much the right thing to do?
Like it's obviously one of those things that everyone expects you to just agree with directionally, but the actually correct answer is no, there is no in general. All drugs have a context where they make sense. E.g. you're probably not vaccinating your kids for rabies, unless you live in an animal sanctuary or something. MMR, sure.
It actually seems pretty questionable to me that it was ever a net benefit to your average young kid to get the covid shots.
estearum 3 hours ago [-]
No there actually is in general and it's the same exact way in which there's generally good guidance for medicating your children: they're called evidence-backed guidelines.
The contexts in which drugs make sense is captured by the clinical guidelines.
And sure, it is arguably questionable whether there was ever a net benefit to an average young kid to get a COVID vaccine. However that is a distinct claim from "it never made sense to give kids COVID vaccines." There was certainly a point in time in which a logical interpretation of the information available at the time indicated that kids should get vaccinated. The risks were (correctly) understood to be near-zero and the benefits were (arguably incorrectly) understood to be significant.
Someone who, in early 2021, decided against vaccinating their children was making a decision that was not indicated by the best-available information at that time.
Someone who bets on Red doesn't get to claim they were "correct" in betting on Red even if Red comes up, and certainly not if Green comes up (arguably neutral outcome).
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
estearum 9 hours ago [-]
Maybe you should hang out with a different "everybody" if they systematically believe untrue things
bhaak 8 hours ago [-]
Ah, one of those "everybody knows" argument that is on the level of "everybody knows that Napoleon was short".
It's not completely wrong but it ignores important context. The part you are leaving unsaid is that the vaccine reduced transmission even if it didn't prevent it completely. 80% reduction is a significant amount.
Wearing masks on top of that was the sensible thing to do.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
SideburnsOfDoom 8 hours ago [-]
Who is "they" ? And are they in the room with you now?
declan_roberts 12 hours ago [-]
I can't speak for other people but I was upset to enter a medical era where bureaucrats were forcing medical decisions on me. I was forced to get it or lose my job despite 1) working remotely, 2) having already had Covid and 3) being healthy and not at risk of Covid death but being the largest risk for myocarditis.
Arkhaine_kupo 11 hours ago [-]
> I was upset to enter a medical era
Did we enter a new era or where you not paying attention or affecting you before?
Reminds me of the old adage of:
Q: "Why is no one speaking about this?"
R: "Is no one talking about this, or are you just 20 and its the first time you are hearing about it?"
BigTTYGothGF 9 hours ago [-]
> I was upset to enter a medical era where bureaucrats were forcing medical decisions on me
We've been in that era your whole life.
searine 11 hours ago [-]
Because, it is always all about you...
DaSHacka 9 hours ago [-]
Clearly his issue is not understanding its actually all about 'grandma'.
searine 7 hours ago [-]
It's about protecting each other, basic empathy. Doing the bare minimum to and taking miniscule risk to protect the lives of people around you. Sorry that's hard to understand.
declan_roberts 8 hours ago [-]
"Think about grandma" was the covid version of "somebody think of the children"
declan_roberts 8 hours ago [-]
That's the definition of a personal decision.
searine 7 hours ago [-]
I might decide to shit on your front porch every morning. It is the definition of a personal decision.
martythemaniak 11 hours ago [-]
Is that when you entered that era? Or did you enter it when you were a newborn in the hospital, or a kid entering school?
hdhdhsjsbdh 11 hours ago [-]
Americans are so silly. Resentful of being told to do anything for their own good or the good of others because of “individual liberty”, yet so willing to lick the boot of the police state and corrupt crony capitalists. Good news for you is that Elon went in and set the bureaucrats straight, so enjoy your diarrhea and glass in your food.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bhaak 12 hours ago [-]
What are the reasons for the hate of the COVID vaccine?
DaSHacka 9 hours ago [-]
Mostly that it was forced unneccessarily on everyone, even those who did not benefit from it, if I had to guess.
pfdietz 8 hours ago [-]
Forced on everyone? That's a thing that didn't happen.
declan_roberts 12 hours ago [-]
Probably one of the most polarizing issues of the last 5 years.
epistasis 11 hours ago [-]
"Polarizing" is a word that kind of applies, especially if one is trying to be polite, but really it's one of the most politically disinformed issues in a long long time.
A bunch of grifters pushed fear, uncertainty, and doubt for personal gain, at the expense of the health of the nation. I try not to blame people who got tricked, but at some point we need to treat people like adults who are responsible for their own actions, and hold them accountable for the harm they perpetuate by believing BS and acting on it.
A democracy cannot function when its members are low-functioning, and when bad information dominates. Those who spread disinformation, relish the conspiracy and disinformation because it makes them feel special emotionally, and wallow in the mess of it, are hurting us all.
Arkhaine_kupo 11 hours ago [-]
> A democracy cannot function when its members are low-functioning, and when bad information dominates.
A discussion as old as time. Plato considered voting a skill, and if you were shit at it, then you shouldnt be voting
SideburnsOfDoom 10 hours ago [-]
You're not wrong, at least in the USA - but it really shouldn't be. The polarisation was ginned up for various bad reasons, including political gain. It's deadly culture war nonsense.
Insanity 12 hours ago [-]
I don't recall it being as polarizing outside of the US, where there was a larger group of anti-vaxxers to begin with. But that might be my "outside US" bubble.
user43928 11 hours ago [-]
I don't know how things were in the US, but it was polarizing in Europe too.
People were holding protests. I know two friends who refused to get the vaccine and downloaded forged documents to be admitted into bars and clubs.
Very anecdotal, but after we went out together they both contracted Covid and had a high fever, while I luckily remained healthy.
MFHava 10 hours ago [-]
Oh it was, actually still is - our right wing party is still talking about this stuff regularly...
estearum 11 hours ago [-]
And, critically, a malignant narcissist in the highest office.
alexlesuper 12 hours ago [-]
Probably disinformation.
tasty_freeze 11 hours ago [-]
There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
However, that discussion was largely side-tracked by the massive amount of disinformation (eg, "Plandemic") that circulated online. There are people who to this day swear that COVID-19 was just like the flu and simultaneously claim that the vaccine spike proteins have killed around 20M people. Not just crackpots, but people with reach, like Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Arkhaine_kupo 11 hours ago [-]
> There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
But we have already protocols and frameworks on public health.
Also plenty of other medical choices are taken with way less input of experts (see abortion discussions for example)
Not sure, the midst of a global crisis, with almost universal scientific approval is the time to have a long discussion on bodily autonomy on countries like america where 50% of people cant read at a 6th grade level.
SideburnsOfDoom 10 hours ago [-]
> There is a legitimate discussion of what can be mandated you do to your body.
There is a legitimate discussion (dating back at least to Typhoid Mary (1) ) on excluding people from public spaces when they refuse to take basic public health measures. Taking a vaccine for a spreading deadly pandemic is one of those measures.
Doing something so violently anti-social is not simply a "bodily autonomy" issue, and framing it only as such is deeply misguided in a way that seems particular to some USA norms.
> In 1907, she was forcibly quarantined at the Riverside Hospital
tasty_freeze 5 hours ago [-]
I got the covid shot and every booster. I have no qualms about mRNA messing me up, and I think it was a tremendous life saver. As stated, there was also a ton of misinformation floating around, and people believed that misinformation.
The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information. They didn't see it as being anti social as they thought the drug was a boondoggle, untested, and that covid wasn't serious. I disagree with all of it, but it is important to understand why they objected, and not just saying they are selfish or antisocial.
dosisking 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nyanmatt 11 hours ago [-]
On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
attila-lendvai 10 hours ago [-]
heh, touché! :)
attila-lendvai 10 hours ago [-]
/me shakes head in disbelief and closes the tab
hungryhobbit 10 hours ago [-]
There are a zillion news sources for this: OP what would possess you to pick the (largely dead) right wing Musk-owned Twitter ("X" )?
DaSHacka 9 hours ago [-]
Has more posts than HN, yet would you describe this platform as 'dead'?
grokcodec 10 hours ago [-]
In other news, your barber thinks you need a haircut.
Until there is a proven net overall health benefit to this therapy, I wouldn't waste much ink on it. Also, can someone please tell me how one controls the dose for an mRNA therapy ?
rob74 10 hours ago [-]
If you actually had melanoma (a very aggressive type of skin cancer) you would be glad for one more chance of maybe still being alive a few years from now.
IF you dropped dead a decade later, it would be a fantastic trade-off.
Vioxx was a long-term problem. Having that problem instead would be a great trade-off relative to untreated melanoma.
preg_match 6 hours ago [-]
Cancer treatment is different. We have a high tolerance for side effects because many cancers are aggressive and deadly. It's a risk-analysis. If your odds of dying from cancer in the next year are 50%, and the drugs have a 25% chance of killing you, then the drugs are worth it.
In actuality, even extremely aggressive therapies like high-dose chemotherapy with stem-cell transplant have shockingly low risk of death. Less than 5%. Bear in mind, that's for a therapy that literally wipes out all of your bone marrow. You know, the part of your body that produces your blood? Your body stops making blood and your immune system. And yet, we've gotten the death rate as low as it is.
grokcodec 6 hours ago [-]
See my comments below on Vioxx - even the manufacturers admitted covid shots caused myocarditis in young men - why are you so sure this new therapy won't cause the same issues, or worse ?
preg_match 3 hours ago [-]
Covid itself has a higher risk of myocarditis than the covid vaccine.
And even if it did, it doesn't matter. You didn't read my comment at all. There are cancer treatments which can kill you outright, I know because I've received them. I think maybe you don't understand what cancer is. We can be very aggressive with the treatments. We have much, much bigger fish to fry than a small risk of myocarditis.
Plutoberth 7 hours ago [-]
A successful phase 3 trial means that the drug is actually effective, not just safe. That's what they test in phase 3.
grokcodec 6 hours ago [-]
As there is no safety data available on this new drug, what makes you say it is safe ? Pre 2020 it took an average of 10 years to release a new vaccine - why do you think it took that long ?
xboxnolifes 7 hours ago [-]
How does one control the dose for anything? Why are you worried about mRNA vaccines in particular?
grokcodec 6 hours ago [-]
Radiation dose, for example, is precisely measured - we know exactly how much radiation the body is exposed to during therapy. mRNA products work by making our cells produce the desired protein/drug. There is no way of controlling how many cells are producing the drug and for how long they are producing it - ergo there is no way of controlling the dose. I hate to break it to you but they have found people producing spike protein over 3 years after getting the covid shot.
egl2020 5 hours ago [-]
Spike proteints: new production or residual fragments?
ted_dunning 5 hours ago [-]
Citation on the spike protein production?
alexthedigger 4 hours ago [-]
Phone cancer is way worse and more prevalent than skin cancer. And it looks and acts the same. Let me know when they find a cure.
Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House fame (I mention this a lot as I read these to my children as an adult, and they’re a fascinating look at 1880s America) has lots of places where her mother says “put on your bonnet! Don’t get too much sun!”. We act like people in the past were ignorant but people in the 50s and 60s were just a very special type of arrogant, all of Chesterton’s fences were torn down during that time period.
They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside.
They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up.
There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed were ignorant on many things.
People with light skin should always wear a hat that fully covers the head/face in tropical/equatorial climates (okay, good so far) or else the powerful sun rays will penetrate the skull (?) causing brain damage that will make you go insane (!?!?)
Victorians may have inadvertently protected themselves against excess mortality due to melanomas with their pith helmets, but it’s pretty hard to argue they were actually “correct” with modern hindsight considering the entire chain of reasoning was wrong.
(For example, you see this in Kipling’s writing where he’ll randomly include an ominous case of some guy who forgot/lost his hat and promptly had to be committed to an insane asylum, as one does).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dogs_and_Englishmen_(song)
That's like a resident of Porto saying most people don't get frostbite walking around outside in winter...
San Francisco is at a southern European latitude. It’s a lot worse in the tropics.
I say this from experience. I am a black person who is not particularly dark skinned, and have only had the slightest sunburn once in my life, after I had been working in a field for 16 hours straight in full sun under clear sky detasseling corn. When I got back to camp, the back of my neck seemed slightly sensitive, which was unusual. It was fine the next morning, and never peeled at all. I did the same for 2 weeks, and this was the only time I felt this. This was the worst sunburn (if it was one) that I've gotten in 50 years of life. I've spent plenty of time outside, and plenty of time inside being a code monkey and never going outside. I've never worn sunscreen.
I've never met a black person as brown as a paper bag who ever got a sunburn, at least that I know of. My dad is pretty pale, I think I would have heard about it.
We both get sunburns. My even darker grandmother got sunburns. My Black friends get sunburns. I am not sure that you are correctly correlating your experience with actual facts about the sunburn resistance offered by melanin.
Unrelated, he also swore he couldn't get poison ivy, until he literally rolled in it to prove it to me. I found the aftermath more amusing than he did.
Note that I'm making no claims on how natural sunburn resistant affects skin cancer.
melanin is also not the only factor in preventing sunburn/cancer. there are many repair pathways and genes, which are present to differing levels in various populations.
Naturally darker skin does not automatically provide sunburn protection. It is spending time in the sun that adds the missing part that provide that protection. I don't know how this differs from dark skin, but I've seen it myself.
Note that my claims are only about sunburn. The article/topic is skin cancer which may well have different factors from sunburn.
"Hm, whom to trust, a person who went to university and follow-on education for nigh a decade, oorrrrrrrrrr.... something someone posted on Facebook that just so happens to confirm what my own ignorance told me was likeliest?"
A young MD full of himself? I may be a bit sceptical about his know-it-all attitude.
All cultures (including mine), have a way to warn kids, or adults for not to stay too long in the sun. From normal sunburn, to feeling light-headenes/fainting due to heat excaustion, etc.
In the winter was the opposite. (stay in the sun to get some sunlight and not get sick).
So, they knew, and had nothing to do with 'class'. Also, they knew some sun was good/beneficial, especially during the winter.
We have an old saying "te rafte pika e diellit", may you get a spot, sun spot, aka cancer from the Sun.
People knew excessive sun is unhealthy.... if you could you avoid it during the summer. It was not necessary to make you look 'rich'. Ability to avoid it, meant you were rich. And people wanted to be pale, because you look rich, that is a second order effect, that came because of the original reason (aka, too much sun is unhealthy).
I think you are retro analyzing and presuming individual intelligence because this collective result looks right to you. Really, some people understand some risks and many people who can follow taboos they can afford are not exactly sure what they would learn first hand and what part is superstition.
I grew up in the same general region as Wilder, and we sought shade not to avoid sunburn. We were all chestnut brown by the end of summer anyway. It's because the direct sunlight on an August afternoon was brutally hot, and you wanted as little of it to hit your skin as possible.
I'd say partly true, mostly false. As sibling comment mentions, much of this was driven by fashion and class etc. and not from some fundamental understanding of damaging UV exposure.
Furthermore there was research that was trendy at the time called "heliotherapy" [0] where all sorts of diseases were believed curable by sun exposure, including smallpox, TB, etc.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy#History
Like, I doubt that fixing a vitamin D deficiency is going to cure you of smallpox or TB, but could imagine a path where it helped at least.
Scurvy is like that. They figured out that if you give sailors a ration of fresh fruit juice they don't get scurvy - this works because the fresh fruit juice has Vitamin C and Scurvy is just Vitamin C deficiency. But they didn't know why it worked - why would a cow, a mango, a lettuce, and indeed basically everything else have a chemical in it that humans can't synthesize ? That's crazy. Except, nope, that's really what's going on. At some point an ancestor deleted the synthesis pathway for this chemical, their offspring weren't bothered because fresh literally everything has the chemical anyway, so the deletion stuck around.
At the same time ships get quite a lot faster, travel across the Atlantic is now rapid enough that even if you deliberately abstained from Vitamin C you wouldn't get scurvy, your body hoards many chemicals it needs (a few must be made "fresh" but most can be hoarded) and only develops issues when the hoarded ascorbic acid is exhausted after a few weeks. But they don't know that, and so when they swap a working solution (store fruit, squeeze the juice out, drink fresh juice) for a non-working solution (squeeze the juice, preserve that, drink preserved juice) the apparent results do not change.
Until they do something more extreme. Go to Antarctica, which is incredibly hostile to life anyway, and then stay there for months. Despite your magic preserved fruit juice you get scurvy. The juice wasn't magic, and eventually you will figure out it was the freshness which was magic and from there that there really is a chemical found in cows, mango, lettuce and basically everything alive which we cannot synthesize. Ascorbic acid, Vitamin C.
So it's not that they ignored the all knowledge. I blame most of it on the rather detrimental tech advancement. Like cigarettes with filters: now safer (except you can smoke more now, and the cancer risk is still a disaster)
I thought you were going to talk about the ingredients in the cream were carcinogenic themself.
I’d be curious to know if tetraethyllead in gasoline has anything to do with people from that time being cavalier about exposure to the sun, or if the science was just not there to make the connection between sun exposure and skin cancer.
It's only recently that we had space for completely retarded ideas like "staying in the sun doesn't hurt you" or "sunscreen causes cancer"
but, what if staying in the sun isn't binary?
and, what if everyday products did cause cancer? https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/cancer-concerns-from-e...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4
https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupatio...
Although it was pretty sunny with clear blue skies, the air temperature was fairly chilly (shirt, jumper and fleece cold - and I'm Scottish so used to cold weather) and I started to burn. I was warned about this, and the probability of high UV exposure at altitude by the locals and family, and was advised to apply a high factor sunblock whilst roaming around the higher elevations of New Zealand's South Island, which I did.
We never wore sunscreen as kids because we didn't burn. I probably have had three sunburns in my life. Learned once I became an adult that that wasn't sound logic...
But Australia has always had a famously robust sun health education programme
However, I’ve never gotten so much as a whisper of sunburn / suntan / anything on an actually cloudy day where sun wasn’t hitting me directly. Is the damage a different type that’s imperceptible? Or is this a public health comms strategy where they assume people will see a single cloud in the sky and decide it’s fine to skip sunscreen, so they talk about how you should slather yourself with sunscreen 24/7, even if the sun is obscured?
So sun obscured != low UV. It will block some of it though.
Well done to the drug researchers. I have my fingers crossed someone else gets to avoid this
a recent study of 2 million people in ontario showed that both high-sun and low-sun exposed people had higher risk of melanoma than people with moderate exposure.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4
https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupatio...
a possible explanation is that UV light stimulates repair pathways within the skin, which boosts the baseline level of repair.
Enhancement of UVB-induced DNA damage repair after a chronic low-dose UVB pre-stimulation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15687...
another explanation is that as much as you can try to cover up, occasionally you may slip up, and going from extreme low-exposure to intense sun is especially bad, because your repair pathways are not primed, skin is untanned, etc..
in conclusion, extreme low or high sun exposure is bad. at the beginning of the summer you should gradually exposure yourself, and then exposure yourself daily but not overly, for the rest of the year.
I'd like to see the primary research backing that up. Or be told how I misinterpreted your statement.
Source: My Mohs surgeon. And 3 skin cancer surgeries (so far).
No this is insane news, the world is crazy and dumb. Must be all these LLMs. Stock up more than 150%, based on totally unpublished data and an X post...
- The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial. The phase 2 was open label, had only 50 controls, and its randomization was disrupted. Meaning 9 patients were reassigned and the final 37 were no longer randomized. Its primary RFS result was p=0.053 two-sided, with the 95% CI crossing 1. It also used an unusually permissive one-sided alpha of 0.10, and much of the later "confirmation" is just longer follow up of those same 157 patients...
- This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release. They have not published hazard ratio, or confidence interval, their event counts or survival curves.
- They met the endpoint as used in the press release means nothing, until they publish the actual 3 data, so my money is at the end this will be a kind of marginal effect that researchers will struggle to reproduce for years
Another type of study that will take 2 to 3 years to validate or dismiss, in the meanwhile stock is up 150%....
> This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release.
Can you find a case where a press release after phase 3 was later proven wrong? They do have the data, and most likely the data is positive. They're talking about FDA's approval as soon as late 2027, which is fairly soon.
Do you know what would be more dramatic than stock gaining 150%? that'd be the stock crashing if the press release turned out to be wrong. Follow the money if you are skeptical. See who's selling.
> The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial.
There are 1,100 patients in phase 3. More evidence that they're pretty confident.
This is great news.
From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463
> Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022
> An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022
UVR = Ultraviolet radiation
Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least:
> The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/
tl;dr ~80% of Cutaneous melanoma cases are attributable to UV exposure.
OP did not say that melanoma has no sun exposure risk but that it is lower than the risks associated with other cutaneous cancers (e.g., SCC and BCC) and it would seem that's true based on the very short search I performed.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/
In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side reply to a culture-war topic.
Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist.
It's fine to see debate, but this is not debate. At most, consistent daily sunscreen use is associated with a 30-50% reduction in melanoma, and some of the ingredients in US sunscreens are themselves associated with cancer.
What would be helpful is a link to a study showing a general reduction in melanomas during a general increase in the use of sunscreen. I'd be able to point that out to friends who questioned me about the efficacy of using it.
edit: that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on. Now to mention this fact has become "bizarre." Can't wait until it becomes "unhinged."
This data [1] shows incidence of melanoma by the age of 30 dropping by half in Australia, presumably as a result of a sun safety campaign that started in the late 80s (not just encouraging sunscreen but also more shade, hats, covering up, etc.). Yet melanoma rates here in general increase but it’s more and more skewed towards the older.
1. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-austra...
the comment you are replying to is HedonicEscal8r's first comment in this comment chain.
>that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on
no... it is correcting your comment that is accusing HedonicEscal8r of having multiple comments in this chain. HedonicEscal8r was not the one to make the comment that you describe as an "unrelated accusation" to "silence the other side".
common courtesy would be to say "oops, i didn't read the usernames, my bad" instead of accusing someone else entirely of "trying to snowball into a pile on" for calling you out on the mistake.
The original comment is misleading. Your reply is bizarre, and seems to deliberately misread the original comment, the reply, and the context.
The reply was reiterating HN rules, as well as adding data supporting the original statement.
By pointing out that it is true using a reference?
> the reply
The reply misunderstood the first comment and went on to discuss something a)interesting but b) not germane to whether melanoma is the skin cancer with the highest sun exposure risk.
I have no idea what you mean by context as this small discussion is quite self-contained. Think of this as making sure everyone realizes two homophones actually are distinct words.
> Most skin cancers are not a big deal, and even Melanomas can vanish on their own
PSA: don't take medical advice from internet comments
Quantifiably false statement. Incredibly dangerous misinformation to spread—shame on you.
From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463
> Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022
> An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022
UVR = Ultraviolet radiation
Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least:
> The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/
That is a discussion of specific subtypes of melanoma. You've turned that into a general statement about melanoma:
> not all skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, and this is more true for Melenoma which occur both more frequently in darker skinned people and in place where there is little sun exposure.
These are "Two rare ... forms of melanoma" not "melanoma as a whole." The article does not say melanoma as a whole is more frequent in darker-skinned people and in places with little sun exposure. Those two subtypes are.
Let's also quote from https://wasatchdermatology.com/blogs/basal-cell-vs-squamous-...
> BCC ... can cause significant local tissue damage if left untreated. Most cases are linked to chronic sun exposure, especially in fair-skinned individuals.
> While it often remains localized at first, SCC can invade deeper tissues and, in some cases, metastasize to lymph nodes or other organs. Risk factors include cumulative sun exposure, a history of sunburns, and immunosuppression.
> While not all skin cancers can be prevented, effective sun protection and healthy habits can greatly reduce your risk for basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma.
That does not support "most skin cancers are not a big deal"
> Melanomas can vanish on their own
Your link does not support that statement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41379-021-00870-2
"Whilst some studies reported an association with improved survival ... others did not find any significant association, and some even reported worse outcomes in patients whose tumors showed regression"
You seem to have read this as "melanoma just goes away and the problem is gone" rather than "the primary tumor can recede, and in that case survival odds are somewhat better by a few percentage points (but actually worse for Stage III patients!)"
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/melanoma-skin-cancer/det...
The study data is not out yet, I thought it was, so I will wait untiul it is to comment further.
But saying in the press that:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-20/melanoma-drug-cancer-...
"Melanoma is one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer, with more than 330,000 new cases diagnosed worldwide in 2022."
Saying melanoma is the deadliest forms of skin cancer is not revealing anything and is a scare tactic. In 2022, there were approximately 60,000 deaths worldwide due to melanoma. A rare cancer with 18% death rate is not high compared to the others. The deadliest cancers include lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer. These cancers have the lowest survival rates and account for a significant number of cancer-related deaths.
But I will wait for the upcoming complications and the worse 5 year all cause mortality rate in these patients.
I'll go first: my hope is that someone who has read what I've written will be more likely to take seriously something suspicious they see on their skin rather than ignore it as unimportant, and be more inclined to take seriously protection from sun exposure when possible
Sun exposure does not cause skin cancer. It only increases the risk of skin cancer in some people. Look at the ROI on people's behavior and it makes no sense. Are we actually causing more damage by using all this sunscreen and the plastic bottles it comes in and lowering everyone's vitamin D levels?
Sunscreen was widely used in the 70's and skin cancer rates keep going up. It's useless.
Multiple things can be true at the same time:
1. Skin cancer can be successfully treated if found and removed early
2. Vitamin D is healthy and necessary, but at the same time too much sun exposure is harmful. That harm depends on different factors (like skin tone)
3. Some kinds of sunscreen might be problematic or bad for the environment, but there are different kinds of sunscreen (mineral-based, reef-safe)
4. There are multiple ways to mitigate sun exposure, not just sunscreen (avoid peak UV times, wear sun-protective clothing). Mitigation doesn't mean "complete avoidance"
5. Sun exposure is not the only cause of skin cancer, but it is a cause of skin cancer and a common one at that
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(20)30092-1/abs...
My argument is that higher vitamin D will help a person’s life more than any increase of risk of skin cancer one would get from exposure to the sun.
"Alcohol does not always cause hangovers" is also true.
"Some people don't get hangovers from alcohol" is also true.
"Some hangovers are not caused by alcohol" is also true.
"Alcohol does not cause hangovers" is a false statement.
So it is with UV radiation from the sun and skin cancer.
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-moderna-announce-phase-...
Still no actual Phase 3 data presented.
So this should answer the question of "how much better is this with the best we currently have".
https://archive.ph/SQQ97
I wish this treatment was available a few years ago.
Enjoy the time you have with him now and be grateful for all the years you've had. Nothing is going to make the loss of a parent "OK" and it will hurt no matter if you see it coming like you are or it's a surprise.
Remember to breathe.
Melanoma is usually completely resistant to traditional cancer drugs. So that sometimes immune therapy works is very welcome.
Are these two companies the ones to cure cancer (for the rich, being that these therapies require custom bio engineering).
Here's a great blog post on this, "How to build a cancer vaccine, and whether they will work this time": https://www.owlposting.com/p/how-to-build-a-cancer-vaccine-a...
Here's the blog post I wrote on personalized mRNA vaccines: https://hedonicescalator.substack.com/p/did-paul-conyngham-r...
Moderna used a simple heuristic, "how likely is this antigen to show up on the cell surface?" which makes sense, since an antigen has to show up on the cell surface for the immune system to see it. But there's so much missing from this model, and we just don't have enough data. Failures in clinical trials of mRNA vaccines may well be caused by this problem. (Yes, this is a good problem for AI, if we can get enough data).
The problem now is finding the correct antigens targeting the cancer cell type. Cancer cells are similar to health cells. You don't want to program a mRNA to generate antigen proteins that target health cells, which causes autoimmune problems.
Those few exceptions have been monumental in how they've changed cancer treatment. Skin cancer has been particularly well treated with immunotherapy, but other cancers have also benefited from the exact same research and drugs (as it turns out, the specific mutations the immunotherapies like Keytruda target express in other cancers). The reason skin cancer gets so much attention is because it's one of the most commonly diagnosed and treated cancers. (Colon is more common, I believe, but it often doesn't get detected. Get your colonoscopies folks).
It has moved fast enough that I've heard from multiple oncologists that the all 5 year survivability numbers are dated because the treatments are newer than the studies.
We've come a LONG way in a very short period in terms of cancer treatment. It still sucks, but not as much as it once did.
"Almost never" is doing a lot of work. You may be aware that most drugs fail over the course of development and human trials?
Anyway, checkpoint inhibitor therapy is a massive boon to oncology and was only brought into widespread use over the past 15 years.
Having a plethora of drugs and treatments is vital because cancer is not "one thing". Each type of cancer will respond better to some treatments than others.
The comment is wrong because it's stupid. Just because we've known that personalized immunotherapy was a promising idea for a long time, and have been trying it with the limited tools we had (CAR T being the poster child, and while an incredible advancement for blood cancers and many other diseases, it is notoriously dangerous and expensive), does not mean we had the technology to accomplish it. Today's results are only possible because of recent advancements in multiple fields, and to respond with "they've tried immunotherapy for decades" is profoundly ignorant. You may as well say, "scientists have been trying to cure cancer for years."
My thoughts as well, Keytruda alone has been a miracle to many many people at this point (quoting GP: "scientists, for decades, have tired [sic] to harness the immune system to attack cancer and it almost never works."), I frequently get ads for local CAR-T centers (unthinkable a little over a decade ago)
Related stories:
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/merck-and-modernas-per...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/merck-moderna-say-m...
https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succ...
MRNA, as it happens, is the latter.
I don't know if that counts as the same "trick" or not as it's another antiviral vaccine. Not that I disagree with you.
I read that this mRNA flu vaccine can be more effective then the regular annual flu shot, simply because the time to create it is shorter, therefor the guess at what strains will circulate that year is more accurate.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41701031/
But it is yet more validation. mRNA technology is here, get used to it.
You are absolutely incorrect with the thrust of your comment. This is a great opportunity to find out where you heard that, and ignore that source going forward.
The largest study I can find has 536k subjects. It shows that mRNA vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people who had COVID had myocarditis >10x more often, and it was a worse long-term form.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363659
Closest thing I could find was a little over 15,000 people in Europe who got myocarditis (also includes pericarditis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10746454/). Out of millions (hundreds of millions?) that received the vaccine. Please stop doing what your doing. It's pretty shit.
Yes, and it's worse than that for the parent commenter, the unvaccinated population also got some cases of myocarditis - often after Covid. And they got myocarditis at a higher rate than the vaccinated.
Example study:
> The incidence of pericarditis and myocarditis in the total population exposed to at least one dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was 5/100,000 (CI95%:3 to 8 per 100,000), compared to 70/100,000 (CI95%: 66 to 92 per 100,000) in those who were not vaccinated.
The study monitored a total population of 536,448 people. This is real data.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38262150/
> The incidence of pericarditis and myocarditis in patients exposed to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was lower than in those who were not vaccinated
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38262150/
Buddy, this is a phase 3 trial. This is about as close as you can get to "anything that can be used on patients" without already being approved.
It is clear that you don't have experience in this area.
Biotech is one of the very very very few areas of the stockmarket where specialist knowledge generates alpha.
Trolling through random biotechs, learning about their tech, and investing in the most promising applications of that tech in the most impactful areas is something that happens somewhat on publicly traded markets. With tech, most of that happens pre-IPO.
It’s similar to the situation where a company puts out a public offer to buy another company at say, $50 a share on a day that the acquisition target is trading at $40/share.
If the stock of the target company is trading at $46/share, the market is pricing in the probability of the acquisition not happening. If the market knew the acquisition would happen with 100% certainty, the price of the target company shares would be equal to the buyout share price offer. You can assume the risk of the acquisition not happening by purchasing shares at $46, and if it does end up going through, you earn $4 a share from assuming that risk.
I'm very very excited to see what comes next.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/merck-and-moderna-...
>Postscript: Our Secretary of Health and Human Services of course cancelled $500 million in mRNA vaccine R&D contracts (22 different programs) last year, and cited a pile of misinformation (and cluelessly misunderstood research citations) to justify it. Our Director of the National Institutes of Health was apparently just fine with this decision and cited mRNA vaccines’ alleged failure to “earn public trust” as one of his reasons, along with public statements that “the mRNA platform is no longer viable”. I have a number of suggestions for each of these individuals and their supporters about how they might spend the rest of their day, and will be glad to send details if they contact me.
I feel like everything companies, and presidents, say now is directly geared to triggering AI trades.
The only thing they are looking at with this drug is people living one more month over existing drugs.
THIS IS NOTHING.
"The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab,"
https://www.merck.com/news/keytruda-pembrolizumab-mercks-ant...
The median PFS (progression-free survival) for KEYTRUDA was 5.5 months (2-week group) and 4.1 months (3-week group) compared to 2.8 months for ipilimumab (HR 0.58, P<0.00001 for the KEYTRUDA groups vs. ipilimumab, 95% CI, 0.46-0.72 for 2-week group and 0.47-0.72 for 3-week group, respectively). The estimated 6-month PFS rates for the KEYTRUDA and ipilimumab arms were 47.3 percent, 46.4 percent and 26.5 percent, respectively. One-year OS for KEYTRUDA was 74.1 percent (2-week group) and 68.4 percent (3-week group) compared to 58.2 percent for ipilimumab (HR 0.63 [95% CI, 0.47-0.83, P=0.00052] for the 2-week group and HR 0.69 [95% CI, 0.52-0.90, P=0.00358] for the 3-week group). At the time of analysis, median overall survival was not reached in any treatment group.
2. I don't think AI was mentioned once in this press release.
3. This drug was approved for trial in 2014, so if it had something to do with deep learning, that would actually be a massive announcement.
4. The paragraph immediately following the one you clipped talks about Overall Response Rate (ORR) and throughout the release they discuss Overall Survival (OS).
5. This is not "NOTHING" in statistical terms, but even more so to people with melanoma.
I was not pointing to PFS as OS.
2. I don't think AI was mentioned once in this press release.
I did not say it was. I said it was written FOR AI trading algorithms to read and invest on.
4. The paragraph immediately following the one you clipped talks about Overall Response Rate (ORR) and throughout the release they discuss Overall Survival (OS).
Someone noted this was an earlier study. The newest study does not even have data out and yet here we are, investing on a press release.
5. This is not "NOTHING" in statistical terms, but even more so to people with melanoma.
You are talking to someone whose father died of pancreatic cancer. "Pancreatic cancer has a higher mortality rate compared to melanoma, with an estimated 52,740 deaths from pancreatic cancer in 2026, while melanoma has a significantly lower death rate. Additionally, the 5-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only 13.7%, compared to higher survival rates for melanoma."
What they did for my father was worse than nothing.
Dying from late-stage cancer is often painful and miserable. It might be shocking, but getting just a few more months from chemo can provide a greater quality of life. Keyword can. Every oncologist is different with different recommendations, and they explain the risks very concretely. There is always an option to refuse treatment, but bear in mind it's not just about how quick you die. It's also about how much that dying sucks.
Sorry, you have no idea. Talk to a chemo nurse.
A friend's sister beat colon cancer over ten years ago but now is having liver problems that took a while to pin down. They warned her she'd probably die in a couple years from the cancer without Chemo, but would have this risk long term and it recently showed up.
Care to share what that is exactly?
They also left the public in the dark about the risk of vaccine-associated myocarditis, especially in young males, many of whom experienced permanent heart tissue damage.
That is a massive gap between what the public was told and what later evidence found. If a technology makes your cells produce a biologically active protein, regulators should establish where it goes, how long it can persist, and what prolonged exposure does before mass deployment.
https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-vaccina... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.25322379v...
which is still the case, even in the Yale study.
> That is a massive gap between what the public was told and what later evidence found.
there is an even larger gap between basic epidemiology and what the public understands.
Hard science is difficult to communicate on a good day, on a global pandemic with quacks getting tons of airtime and multiple labs finding conflicting results (due to speed to publish and bad experimental parameters) I would say that was communicated by health experts was surprisingly valid and accurate.
Where public health officials "failed" was not having a megaphone loud enough to drown out the game of telephone that most people (as these comment threads consistently show) were actually hearing information through.
Simplest example: People will say that public health officials told them "masks don't work." But no! Only one person did, and that was USSG Jerome Adams (who wasn't credible nor a major player to begin with). What public health officials said was "we do not know if masks work," which is a more nuanced but completely accurate statement.
I think Fauci might have had a statement early.
But tbh every other scientist said the opposite, every doctor said the opposite.
If I am not wrong he later admitted that he said it to gain time for the goverment to adquire enough for basic needs like hospitals.
And that is the kind of error that erodes public trust and it was bad advice shared because the american public cannot be trusted to prioritise medical professionals being stocked and because the american gov was unprepared.
But one bad statement, in march of 2020, done for the wrong reasons due to an unprepared goverment voted in by selfish people who cannot be trusted to help others does not deny that the UK had great advice the entire time, so did China, and Spain and Italy and most of the other initial hotbeds. They said "we dont have enough n95 for everyone, please social distance until they are availeble" instead of "masks are not needed".
Despite that, he was the face of a pandemic plan in a goverment alergic to facts and led by a dude who recommended injecting bleach so in that situation, he did as much as you can and is still paying for it.
There were NO longitudinal studies!
NOTHING looked at psychological effects!
REMOVE VIAGRA TODAY!
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Not true. This was correctly disclosed in the trial results as a super super super tail risk.
Once they realized that the (minuscule) risk could be even further mitigated by simply spacing out the booster schedule, they adjusted that (Feb 2022).
Nobody was "left in the dark"
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-...
From your own study you linked. The first comment I ever posted on HN was regarding a similar study where there was no control group whatsoever for unvaccinated people.
I can’t get over the sunk cost reaction to this vaccine. No one who was not immunocompromised should have ever taken it. Period.
And this is just regarding your study.
Remember how the AstraZeneca vaccine (it was called the “Oxford vaccine” before that bad PR) was taken off the market instantly after reports of blood clots.
One can go on endlessly.
Was this knowably true in Q1 2021?
Can you please share the specific, contemporaneously available information that made this knowably true?
If you can't, then it's not "sunk cost" infecting someone else's thinking, it's hindsight bias infecting yours.
But even more is the validation of this new custom MRNA novel cancer treating platform. If you take this data result to be a 'proof of concept', the expected value of the rest of their pipeline is suddenly worth a lot more.
Of course, this is all assuming the data is accurate and the drug gets approved, neither of which are 100% guaranteed.
Can you clarify that? It saved 100K+ lives even by incredibly conservative estimates, and allowed life to returned to normal at least a year earlier than otherwise.
The covid shots were good against hospitalization and death in older folks, but they were not great at preventing infection or transmission (despite what you may have gleaned from the speakers blaring ads in every public setting for all that time).
You can fall back to the "flooding the hospitals" argument, that works a little better here.
The vaccines were extremely effective at reducing transmission during the first waves of COVID, where such an intervention was most valuable. And due to viral growth dynamics, even small reductions in transmission yield big net outcomes.
50% - 70% reduction in transmission: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597
Later waves made the vaccine much less effective at reducing transmission, but still highly effective at reducing hospital utilization which is (despite your snarky aside), extremely valuable. Fatality rates doubled when ERs hit full capacity.
Thats my pushback against gp's argument that you have to give this thing to your young kids to protect me.
Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with.
Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them.
Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them.
I struggle to think of a decision or conversation where the relevant metric is "what % of time from vaccination until today were you protected" and I doubt that's what GP was discussing either.
Isn't this kinda like saying medicating your children in general is very much the right thing to do?
Like it's obviously one of those things that everyone expects you to just agree with directionally, but the actually correct answer is no, there is no in general. All drugs have a context where they make sense. E.g. you're probably not vaccinating your kids for rabies, unless you live in an animal sanctuary or something. MMR, sure.
It actually seems pretty questionable to me that it was ever a net benefit to your average young kid to get the covid shots.
The contexts in which drugs make sense is captured by the clinical guidelines.
And sure, it is arguably questionable whether there was ever a net benefit to an average young kid to get a COVID vaccine. However that is a distinct claim from "it never made sense to give kids COVID vaccines." There was certainly a point in time in which a logical interpretation of the information available at the time indicated that kids should get vaccinated. The risks were (correctly) understood to be near-zero and the benefits were (arguably incorrectly) understood to be significant.
Someone who, in early 2021, decided against vaccinating their children was making a decision that was not indicated by the best-available information at that time.
Someone who bets on Red doesn't get to claim they were "correct" in betting on Red even if Red comes up, and certainly not if Green comes up (arguably neutral outcome).
It's not completely wrong but it ignores important context. The part you are leaving unsaid is that the vaccine reduced transmission even if it didn't prevent it completely. 80% reduction is a significant amount.
Wearing masks on top of that was the sensible thing to do.
Did we enter a new era or where you not paying attention or affecting you before?
Reminds me of the old adage of:
Q: "Why is no one speaking about this?"
R: "Is no one talking about this, or are you just 20 and its the first time you are hearing about it?"
We've been in that era your whole life.
A bunch of grifters pushed fear, uncertainty, and doubt for personal gain, at the expense of the health of the nation. I try not to blame people who got tricked, but at some point we need to treat people like adults who are responsible for their own actions, and hold them accountable for the harm they perpetuate by believing BS and acting on it.
A democracy cannot function when its members are low-functioning, and when bad information dominates. Those who spread disinformation, relish the conspiracy and disinformation because it makes them feel special emotionally, and wallow in the mess of it, are hurting us all.
A discussion as old as time. Plato considered voting a skill, and if you were shit at it, then you shouldnt be voting
People were holding protests. I know two friends who refused to get the vaccine and downloaded forged documents to be admitted into bars and clubs.
Very anecdotal, but after we went out together they both contracted Covid and had a high fever, while I luckily remained healthy.
However, that discussion was largely side-tracked by the massive amount of disinformation (eg, "Plandemic") that circulated online. There are people who to this day swear that COVID-19 was just like the flu and simultaneously claim that the vaccine spike proteins have killed around 20M people. Not just crackpots, but people with reach, like Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast.
But we have already protocols and frameworks on public health.
Also plenty of other medical choices are taken with way less input of experts (see abortion discussions for example)
Not sure, the midst of a global crisis, with almost universal scientific approval is the time to have a long discussion on bodily autonomy on countries like america where 50% of people cant read at a 6th grade level.
There is a legitimate discussion (dating back at least to Typhoid Mary (1) ) on excluding people from public spaces when they refuse to take basic public health measures. Taking a vaccine for a spreading deadly pandemic is one of those measures.
Doing something so violently anti-social is not simply a "bodily autonomy" issue, and framing it only as such is deeply misguided in a way that seems particular to some USA norms.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
> In 1907, she was forcibly quarantined at the Riverside Hospital
The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information. They didn't see it as being anti social as they thought the drug was a boondoggle, untested, and that covid wasn't serious. I disagree with all of it, but it is important to understand why they objected, and not just saying they are selfish or antisocial.
Vioxx was a long-term problem. Having that problem instead would be a great trade-off relative to untreated melanoma.
In actuality, even extremely aggressive therapies like high-dose chemotherapy with stem-cell transplant have shockingly low risk of death. Less than 5%. Bear in mind, that's for a therapy that literally wipes out all of your bone marrow. You know, the part of your body that produces your blood? Your body stops making blood and your immune system. And yet, we've gotten the death rate as low as it is.
And even if it did, it doesn't matter. You didn't read my comment at all. There are cancer treatments which can kill you outright, I know because I've received them. I think maybe you don't understand what cancer is. We can be very aggressive with the treatments. We have much, much bigger fish to fry than a small risk of myocarditis.