Okay so how come the public sector doesn't release cures for chronic disorders? Fred Banting discovered insulin at the University of Toronto, how come he didn't discover a cure?

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know about Canada but I'm in the other CA, and I know UCLA for instance actively partners with (gets a lot of funding from) pharmaceutical companies for their research projects.

Fred Banting did what was possible, even considered impossible, at the time. Today's question, how come we still haven't discovered a cure? Best we can do is a transplanted pancreas and kidney, if we can find a dead but healthy donor.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 points 11 hours ago

Electronic devices often have potentiometers that let you calibrate them with a screwdriver. If I were designing a human, I'd give it potentiometers, or a chemical equivalent, to make maintenance easier. So if you become insulin resistant, we can just open you up and turn a screw to reduce your resistance.

But the human body wasn't designed to be repaired. It evolved to self-repair. Its systems are all based on the assumption of live adaptation to the situation, they're self calibrating. We can't manually adjust the calibration, it wasn't made with those interfaces. Insulin receptors don't have potentiometers.

So all of the hacks we've built to repair the human body are live fixes, the same as its own mechanisms. We adjust the insulin upwards to counter the resistance the same as the body does. Or reduce the rate at which blood sugar is released so less storage is needed. Those treatments need constant intervention because the human body is designed for constant adaptation.

Or we can just replace the part like we would with a machine that isn't designed to be calibrated. Which is hard work.