It's such a tease seeing headlines like these as someone with a bone disease. I've started following grants for research on my illness 15 years ago, and every few years they reapply having discovered a tiny part of the process necessary to understand the disease and develop a therapy.
As a scientist I know things take time and hard, dedicated, work but as a patient it's soul-draining to see your life pass you by while waiting for these discoveries to materialize into cures or drugs.
I would recommend keeping an eye on Emcell - they have been doing research using donated fetal tissue (there are an estimated 50mm+ abortions per year) for 30 years, and they've recently been able to ramp up their research efforts due to demand and exposure increasing for their existing treatments.
A lot of people accept the practice of medicine in just the way that they experience it, rather than as it could be.
It's just accepted that there are limits to what medicine can do, and often times those limitations are devastating. This outlook makes sense for most people, because what else would they do?
However, for every high-profile disease process that doesn't have a known and rigorously understood cause, medicine as a field of study has a major gap in it.
These aren't just gaps. These are major gaps. They're high-profile. They cause endless suffering for families across the world, they kill people, they make beloved grandparents forget everything about themselves and their families as they slowly die.
If we haven't been able to pinpoint the root causes of these things that are getting huge amounts of attention, imagine what else we're missing.
We are still in the stone age with regards medicine, biology, and microbiology. The tools we have might seem incredible to some, but they're extremely crude by future standards. Sure you could say this about any industry but it's especially true about medicine.
I was just thinking about this. They just found a new salivary gland a few months ago. And that was in a relatively accessible location... would not be surprised if there are similar things waiting to be discovered in the brain.
What blows my mind is that we have something like CRISPR and people using it with certainty and cavelier "throw caution to the wind" attitude, while undiscovered cells are still a thing.
Hmmm I wonder how many more types of cells like this there are. Is there any reason to think that body wouldn't use a very small amount each of an enormous amount of specialist cells.
> This, together with the evidence of the new re-fusion processes observed by intravital imaging, convinced us that we had discovered a new cell type, which we called osteomorphs, after the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
This goes with the gene named after Sonic the Hedgehog I guess. Supposedly this kind of name makes it difficult for doctors when they have to tell people they have cancer caused by a sonic hedgehog mutation.
A sonic hedgehog mutation doesn't cause cancer, it causes central midline defects (which in fruit flies turns the fruit fly larvae into spiky balls, hence the name.)
Wait, that gene was literally named after Sonic the Hedgehog? Always thought it was some kind of happy coincidence. Not very scientific but extremely cool.
Yeah, I suspect doctors would usually just call it by the abbreviation, SHH or what not and leave it at that. Osteomorphs doesn't sound that bad as long as the doctor doesn't add the origin. Sounds like a standard Greek medical neologism.
Patients I guess get to find out when they start researching whatever condition on the web. Latin/Greek derived names do sound more important though.
The only thing I got from this article is now the cookies banner with slide from the right side of the screen and completely block the text on one side making it impossible to read through while ignoring cookie banner. So I just left the site
Biologists are using the genome expression in each kind of tissue to refine the number of tissues. These were counted observationally in the past. Some suspect the count could as much as triple this way.
[+] [-] ad404b8a372f2b9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
Free documentary on the clinic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRcmDySFyE
[+] [-] conductr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] odyssey7|5 years ago|reply
It's just accepted that there are limits to what medicine can do, and often times those limitations are devastating. This outlook makes sense for most people, because what else would they do?
However, for every high-profile disease process that doesn't have a known and rigorously understood cause, medicine as a field of study has a major gap in it.
These aren't just gaps. These are major gaps. They're high-profile. They cause endless suffering for families across the world, they kill people, they make beloved grandparents forget everything about themselves and their families as they slowly die.
If we haven't been able to pinpoint the root causes of these things that are getting huge amounts of attention, imagine what else we're missing.
[+] [-] rubicon33|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enchiridion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] witherk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segmondy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] farseer|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubarial_salivary_gland
[+] [-] gsich|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|5 years ago|reply
This goes with the gene named after Sonic the Hedgehog I guess. Supposedly this kind of name makes it difficult for doctors when they have to tell people they have cancer caused by a sonic hedgehog mutation.
[+] [-] taneq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrmm|5 years ago|reply
Patients I guess get to find out when they start researching whatever condition on the web. Latin/Greek derived names do sound more important though.
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FriendlyNormie|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] timeimp|5 years ago|reply
Nice.
[+] [-] 14|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter303|5 years ago|reply