[botusaurus]

why do they call it a vaccine, its nothing like that...

there's probably a reason evolution didnt put the immune system on permanent "amber alert" as they call it in the article

[amelius]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert

Amber alert means something different than the author thinks ...

[kazinator]

They wanted "red alert".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Alert

This is just an idiom for denoting a high alert state.

[resoluteteeth]

Notice that that Wikipedia page links to a disambiguation page which links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIKINI_state which may be more familiar to people in the UK than the meaning you are thinking of

[RupertSalt]

Perhaps "Defcon 02" would be better understood?

[Angostura]

> The research team in the US does not think the immune system should be permanently dialled up and think such a vaccine should be used to compliment rather than replace current vaccines

[kojacklives]

True though there is the theory that it was unnecessary for the immune system to regulate itself in some ways because we were full of parasites.

[mattmaroon]

Isn’t Amber alert a missing child? Wouldn’t you say like DEFCON three or something?

[RupertSalt]

This article is from the UK, so it's more like: evacuate the children, Keep Calm and Carry On, but fight them on the beaches.

[giarc]

>The effect lasted for around three months in animal experiments.

It would just be temporary, but there is likely trade offs.

[renewiltord]

One of the things I do worry about is glasses. Is there a reason why we correct vision? There's probably a reason evolution made some of us see the world in a blur. Likewise with therapy - maybe killing yourself is like cell apoptosis. Many body cells are supposed to choose to die when they no longer function well. It's a good thing. That's often the problem with scientists: "They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should".

Until we find out why nature made it so some of us kill ourselves maybe we shouldn't fuck with it? Remember Chesterton's Fence.

[krapp]

You're making the mistake of thinking of "nature" and "evolution" as intelligent, reasoning systems, and that every evolutionary adaptation exists for a purpose. Evolution doesn't do things for "reasons," things just happen.

Remember that cephalopod brains are donut shaped and their digestive tracts go right through the middle and if they eat something too big they'll have an anyeurism. Pandas and koalas evolved special diets that serve no evolutionary purpose and both would be extinct if humans didn't find them cute. Sloths have to climb down from trees to take a shit. Female hyenas give birth through a pseudopenis that often ruptures and kils them. Horses can't vomit and if they swallow something toxic, their stomach ruptures. Also their hooves and ankles are extremely weak and not well designed to support their weight. Numerous species like the fiddler crab and peacock have evolved sexual displays that are actively harmful to their survival.

And as for humans, our spines are not well adapted for walking upright, our retinas are wired backwards, and we still have a useless appendix and wisdom teeth. The recurrent laryngeal nerve has an unnecessarily long and complex route branching off the vagus and travelling around the aorta before running back up to the larynx.

Evolution is not smart. Evolution isn't even stupid. It isn't trying to keep you alive and it isn't even capable of caring if you die. Yes we should absolutely fuck with it, because we don't want to live in a world where we still die of sepsis and parasites and plagues because "we don't want to mess with evolution."

[nradov]

Although we don't have a lot of hard evidence, there is reason to suspect that the high rate of poor vision in modern young people is more environmental than an evolutionary flaw. We spend too much time indoors staring at nearby objects under dim artificial light. People who spend most of their time outdoors are less likely to need vision correction, although there could be trade-offs later in life as the damage caused by natural UV light accumulates.

[dekhn]

The reason we correct vision is for safety and convenience. My guess is that we have a distribution of vision capabilities due to the inability of complex biological systems to ensure that the precise geometry of the cornea and lens is subject to statistical variations that can't be controlled. There are probably also tradeoffs associated with near and far vision.

Now, you could have restated this in a better way IMHO. I'd put it like this: are there any evolutionary advantages to having worse-than-average near or far vision? For example, we can imagine that people who had extremely good long range vision would be more successful in hunting, and perhaps- this is where I'm speculating heavily- having poor long vision is compensated by having better detail vision for fine tool work. However, what I've learned after many years is that attempting to perceive the true nature of the evolutionary fitness function is challenging.

As for your bit about suicide: please be a lot more thoughtful in speculating about suicide.

[akersten]

I had to upvote this just because it's such an incredible take, it really made my day even if I think it's complete horseradish

[boothby]

Poe's law and all, but the first two responses to this are missing some sarcasm that looks pretty overwrought to me.

[lanyard-textile]

Really...?? :)

"Sorry son, you can't get these glasses. It's for the betterment of humanity."

[thomquaid]

This isnt a vaccine against suicide.

[Larrikin]

Are you wildly speculating or do you have a source with research backing up your claim evolution got it perfectly right?

I personally look forward to every innovation that potentially improves our baseline.

[dekhn]

They didn't claim evolution got it perfectly right.

They speculated that immune systems evolved to avoid being continuously on alert. And that's exactly right- our immune systems have an extremely complicated system for detecting foreign invaders that is tightly regulated. And a failure to regulate that is often associated with autoimmune disorders, which remain very poorly understood.

I've studied biology from the perspective of engineering better drugs for decades now and I can say with confidence that I simply don't understand how the immune system works, and I don't think anybody else really does either (compared to, say, the heart, or many biological systems like protein production). We have identified many players, and observed a great deal of actions, and have speculative models for many of the underlying processes, but we don't really have an "understanding" of the immune system. I skimmed this paper and frankly, it has a very long way to go before people are convinced to try this in human clinical trials.

I look forward to innovations, but to a first order approximation: evolution found model parameters that exceed the best human science and engineering.

[aaa_aaa]

I bet my money on the immune system any day.