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Comment Re:Science moving forward...country moving backwar (Score 1) 36

The big difference is the profit motive in the absence of a truly free market.

The big difference is the requirement to test them to make sure they work. It's expensive, and most candidates fail.

This is potentially the biggest strenth of a vaccine approach. According to the Internet the flu vaccine costs my government an average of $5.43 cents. Individuals can get it for under $100 in most parts of the world where you have to pay the full cost. The reason it's not stupid expensive, being a new drug with novel components most years, is because the procedure for making flu vaccines is well known and has a special type of approval that lets new variations be used without extensive trials.

Comment Re: Science moving forward...country moving backwa (Score 2) 36

It's not particularly difficult to determine the protein that a bit of DNA codes for. It's more difficult to figure out which of those are going to be reasonable antigens to target, but you don't really have to. Cancer cells aren't unknown pathogens, they're regular old human cells with mutations.

You don't need to do that either though. Cancer mutations aren't infinitely diverse. "Personalized medicine" sounds like a treatment just for you and you alone, and maybe in a Star Trek future it will be, but in the meantime it means a targeted treatment. You'd identify something that occurs in 10% or 1% or 0.01% of a particular type of cancers, make a treatment, and sell that along with a test for that mutation. We've already got several of those based on more traditional immunotherapy. RNA vaccines just make it a lot easier so we'll have lot more options, including ones that target the 1% and 0.01% instead of just the 10%.

Comment Re: AI: Humanity's Worst Invention (Score 1) 79

A corporation is a legal concept that lets a group of people own property and act together. Many people are expecting AI to replace corporations, especially in software development because one guy with an idea will be able to do what now requires a bunch of shareholders to pool their resources and hire a bunch of specialists.

Comment Re: Oversold? and? (Score 1, Troll) 131

You can thank student loans for that. Earlier generations got their schooling subsidized, but now people have to get loans to pay for it themselves instead. Colleges therefore could raise tuition. Then a bipartisan effort in Congress was launched to make sure we couldn't discharge those loans through bankruptcy like you can gambling or other personal debts, which was led by Joseph R Biden. I think we know how that turned out, forgiveness for a few of the worst abused players, and blaming inability to keep his campaign promises related to partial forgiveness for all buyers blamed on Congress while he went around them to fund genocide in Gaza.

Comment Re:Courage of your convictions. (Score 1) 113

No one should express concerns about the environment unless they themselves live fully off-grid, is the most asinine opinion I've read all day.

Excellent! Since you're posting on Slashdot you are clearly not "fully off-grid." Therefore you can't complain about the PCB dump we're putting in your neighbourhood.

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