Had no idea that there was a Russian Nobel Economics laureate in 75 till now. Thanks for the link.
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News on China's scientific and technological development.
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Had no idea that there was a Russian Nobel Economics laureate in 75 till now. Thanks for the link.
Back to topic.
vesicles
Colonel
Whenever people make decisions, politics of some sort is involved. that is a fact. However, in the case of Nobel Prizes, the political part is more on the part of deciding which field to focus on in each cycle. For instance, they decided to focus on malaria because many nasty little bugs are developing drug resistance. It is becoming an epidemic. thus, people on the Nobel committee might have felt that they needed to bring a little more attention to this issue, hence the focus on infectious diseases. Once that is done, everything else becomes as objective as humanly possible.
The fact that they only discovered / awarded the contribution of Chinese scientists so late had little to do with what the Nobel committee has been doing, but what the Chinese govn't had done in the 60's and 70's. Because they did not allow individual authors to be named in their publications, there was little anyone could do to figure out who did what in those classic studies. People knew it was the Chinese who made the discovery but could not pinpoint who. Since the Nobel Prize is an individual award, they could not issue it to the institution. Hence the delay. They were able to conclude Tu Youyou made the most significant contribution after extensive digging and almost immediately gave her the recognition afterward (The Lasker award in 2011 and Nobel in 2015). So the delay was more because of the old Chinese policies, not some political reason from the West.
As an academic, I am biased against the pharmaceutical companies. However, I would like to point out that the big drug companies are essential to our health care system. No one else has the kind of resources like the big Pharma. And many drugs had been discovered because large scale screenings have been carried out by these big Pharma. Without them, we would have had so much fewer treatment options than what we have now. Let's give them some credit. They are not all bad...
Well, the drug resistance is actually a very natural thing. It would be completely illogical if drug resistance does not happen. It's all about evolution. This is based on a well-established fact: DNA constantly mutate, no matter what! Our DNA mutate. And the DNA of bacteria lso mutate. So it's bound to happen that at any moment, some bacteria / virus will be able to mutate their DNA in such a way that allows them to become drug resistant. In most cases, such small random mutation does not matter since the overwhelming majority of the bacteria is still prone to drugs. So the small population of mutants will die off naturally because they simply cannot compete with the rest of the 99.999999% of the population.
However, if you over-use antibiotics, the whole dynamics changes. Now, most of the "normal" bugs cannot survive since they are prone to drugs. The constant exposure to antibiotics will keep killing off the "normal" bugs, thus the proportion of the drug resistant bugs will continue to increase. This will continue to a certain point, where majority of the bugs become drug resistant. Then we have an epidemic at hand. And a perfect example of evolution working at its best!
A good comparison would be to look at how mammals dominate the Earth after the dinosaurs. Just imagine the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs = antibiotics; the dinosaurs = drug prone "normal" bacteria; mammals = drug resistant bacteria. Now you will see that it is only natural that bacteria develop drug resistance.
How to slow down the epidemic? Do NOT over-use antibiotics. I cannot stress this more. Do NOT over-use antibiotics. Antibiotics is the last resort. Use it only when nothing else works. The more antibiotics that you use, the more you are literally helping the bacteria develop drug resistance. You are literally providing a favorable environment to hand-pick those drug resistant bacteria to survive and to thrive. So no more antibiotic handsoap "that kills 99.9999% of bacteria"!
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I heard in all publications back then they have to write a foreword thanking Mao for the insights his revolutionary thoughts gave, or whatever.
What is your opinion regarding mental health, are pharmaceutical companies developing effective solutions with regarding to these kind of problems or whether only to supress symptoms, has mental health problems been increasing in modern periods or whether it is just more awareness, or just drug companies making a bigger problem than it actually is?
How to slow down the epidemic? Do NOT over-use antibiotics. I cannot stress this more. Do NOT over-use antibiotics. Antibiotics is the last resort. Use it only when nothing else works. The more antibiotics that you use, the more you are literally helping the bacteria develop drug resistance. You are literally providing a favorable environment to hand-pick those drug resistant bacteria to survive and to thrive. So no more antibiotic handsoap "that kills 99.9999% of bacteria"![/QUOTE]
Somehow my previous post to vesicles got screwed up.
Heres what I meant to say.......
They reckon that half the antibiotics used in the States alone is used in agriculture to promote more efficient feed usage and animal growth.So i guess Asia would use a fair amount as well in the Pork and Chicken farms.
I love shrimps and prawns but avoid farmed shrimps like the plague especially from Asia and Mexico.Periodically, farmed shrimps from India Thailand Vietnam China, when tested, have returned higher than whats acceptable levels of antibiotics too hard for me to spell or remember.
WE should let our bodies build up a natural resistance to mild infections. These days we live in super insulated homes so that we dont get the sniffles, shower far too often and wash the good bacteria off our bodies.
...
Heres what I meant to say.......
They reckon that half the antibiotics used in the States alone is used in agriculture to promote more efficient feed usage and animal growth.So i guess Asia would use a fair amount as well in the Pork and Chicken farms.
I love shrimps and prawns but avoid farmed shrimps like the plague especially from Asia and Mexico.Periodically, farmed shrimps from India Thailand Vietnam China, when tested, have returned higher than whats acceptable levels of antibiotics too hard for me to spell or remember.
WE should let our bodies build up a natural resistance to mild infections. These days we live in super insulated homes so that we dont get the sniffles, shower far too often and wash the good bacteria off our bodies.
...
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vesicles
Colonel
I don't think I'm in position to comment a lot on the mental health since I know very little of psychology. With that said, I do know a little about neuroscience and electrophysiology. And the physiology of our brain has not changed since the old days. So it's less likely that we are seeing an increase in mental diseases.
It is my opinion that we are simply recognizing more issues as mental diseases, instead of just "plain crazy or possessed by spirits" back in the good ole days. I don't think big pharma is doing anything to worsen the issue. Most of what the pharma do is based on decades of basic research done in academia. It is seldom to see big Pharma coming up with their own fields, like making up mental health issues. It's simply too costly. We have enough health problems to deal with. I don't think any big Pharma would worry about running out of drugs to come up with and having to make up diseases to create market.
Mostly, the big Pharma look to the academia for ideas. They go through tons of published studies. If a field is too basic, they will leave it alone. these concepts would be too abstract and too imature for anyone including the basic researchers to find any real- world use. As a field gets more mature, it gets hotter and hotter. And big Pharma picks the field up and begin to do tons and tons of screening based on the concepts/theories in this mature field. At this point, most of the basic researchers let go of the field and move on to something else, mostly because of financial issues since we simply cannot afford such large scale operation. It is also because it becomes "boring" at this stage. Take me as a example, the whole process of drug discovery bores me to no end. I do research to satisfy my curiosity and my urge to explore the unknown. There is nothing exciting in drug screening to me. It's plain labor when you simply do the same tests day in and day out and go through hundreds of thousands and even millions of small chemicals to find that "one good hit". However, I would like to stress that this step is absolutely essential to the whole healthy care system. Without it, all the cool theories would simply stay on paper and will never benefit people.
So to summarize, most of what the big Pharma do is based on extensive basic research. It's simply a cost-effective way of doing things. And it makes it easier for them to pass FDA. Every time when they want to submit a drug for FDA approval, they have to show extensive literature data to support their own data. This means they have to show the FDA extensive published data. They can spend money to advertise to the public about certain drugs, but it would be impossible for them to come up with decades of published data to fool FDA inspectors into giving the the permit to put the drug on the market. Without the background basic data, they will never get the approval from the FDA.
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vesicles
Colonel
I agree that we should allow our body to build its own immune defense. With that said, that does not mean we shouldn't take medication. What I mean is those anti-inflammatory drugs. We should take them when needed. Although these drugs have no effect on viruses and they only releave the symptoms, it is absolutely critical that we take these drugs. It's not about killing the viruses. Our body can do that because we have a powerful immune system. And also because of that, our immune system is a double-edged sword. An immune system going out of control is more damaging to our body than any virus. Most of the serious diseases that we face today originate from immune system going weird. cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, etc all stem from inflammation and other immune system issues. So it is absolutely important that we keep our immune system in check. Taking some ibuprofen when getting a flu is exactly for that, making sure to keep our immune system in check and calm.
vesicles
Colonel
About the effectiveness of the drugs, I think that is an issue with the entire field of medicine and not limited to mental diseases. Our understanding of the biological systems is still so much lacking. Although we have gained so much knowledge of how a single cell functions. This knowledge is still limited to the single cell level. Cells do not exist as single entities. They gather together, pack tightly into tissues. How cells behave in an actual tissue is still largely unknown. How cells communicate with each other and change each other's behaviors is still unknown. This is why drugs do unexpectd things. It's like blinds feeling an elephant. We can only see a small portion of the whole story. That's why most of the medicine only treat symptoms. We simply don't know what the whole thing is about...
And now for something entirely different, from Sputnik:
This looks to be about the size of the US Superconducting Super Collider that was abandoned in1993.
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