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  • 51 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 20th, 2023
  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden
    3·
    6 months ago

    I agree it may have presented barriers for coordination the FDA and access to US markets. I haven’t been able to dig deep into the Cuban studies, but just because something is labeled a phase 3 or phase 4 by the investigators doesn’t necessarily mean it was done to the standards necessary for fda approval or in the correct context of current standard of care treatments in the US or who knows how many other issues. If it was fully ready for all markets as is and required no further investigations, and it was only the US FDA causing problems, I would expect it to have already been widely available in many other countries that don’t have embargos with Cuba, like all of Europe. Currently it’s only available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru, and Paraguay.

    Mostly though I didn’t want someone to accidentally misread this and think it meant cure. I realize you did not say that, but it’s just a common misreading I’ve noticed people make of the term cancer vaccines when they’ve been mentioned in popular media. Didn’t want someone to drag their poor dying relative off to Paraguay thinking they’re getting cured.

    I agree the Cuban embargo is ridiculous, should be stopped, and is hurting both countries with no benefit to anyone (other than keeping a certain segment of voters in Florida happy).

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden
    17·
    6 months ago

    It’s also not a vaccine in the sense it’s preventing cancer, it’s for the treatment of cancer that is already there, specifically non small cell lung cancers (though it’s being tested in other cancers that use the signaling mechanism being targeted). Not saying it’s impossible that it could prevent cancer, just that it hasn’t been tested in that way to the best of my knowledge.

    There is some precedence for a vaccine like that though. The HPV vaccine for instance prevents HPV (and therefore hpv related cancers), but is also used as a treatment if an HPV related cancer develops.

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Congress voted against funding a cure for cancer just to block a win for Biden
    1221·
    6 months ago

    Slight correction on that vaccine, the FDA doesn’t authorize any drug for sale in the US that hasn’t passed it’s rigorous trials and gone through its approval process. It’s currently being tested and has more trials ongoing right now. FDA will be able to approve it for sale if it passes its trials.

    https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.9135

    Also the word cancer vaccine kind of implies cure to some, but it’s not by any means:

    “MST was 10.83 months for vaccinated vs. 8.86 months for non-vaccinated. In the Phase III trial, the 5-year survival rate was 14.4% for vaccinated subjects vs. 7.9% for controls.”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346887/

    So it might be a useful tool but just don’t want to get hopes up unnecessarily. People who’s immune system reacted to the vaccine the strongest did best, so current trials are focused on combining it with an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug to increase the immune response even more hopefully (and those drugs are already being used by themselves in cancer). These drugs block “checkpoints” in the immune system that would normally stop it from attacking things like yourself, which we kind of want it to do in cancer.

    Not saying I support an embargo in Cuba, I don’t, just don’t want this comment to be inadvertently read as “Cuba has had the cure to lung cancer this whole time and you’re not allowed to have it!” which isn’t true.

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•U.S. put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel
    9·
    6 months ago

    Yes not disputing at all that there’s a proxy war (though Soviet Israeli relationship deteriorated long before that started with Soviets funding Israeli opponents since 1967), just that despite or partially because of this, Israel is closer to Russia than most western countries. Isreal doesn’t want to upset Russia and give them more incentive to fund proxies against them, and some Israeli governments, like Netanyahu’s especially, have helped provide cover for Russian actions. And Russia at times will often take surprisingly pro Israeli moves despite also funding proxies.

    I don’t think it would be impossible for Israel to switch alignment to Russia, and I think you would quickly see Russia providing cover and stopping any assistance with proxy conflict against them. It would be essentially accomplishing Russia’s goal, so what would they have to fight Israel about anymore? Putin is a real politic great powers kind of leader who has no qualms about butchering civilians by the thousands. He’s certainly not aligned with Iran because he’s concerned about Palestinians. Israel becoming fully aligned with Russia would be accomplishing a 77 year in the making goal for the Soviet Union and Russia.

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•U.S. put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel
    17·
    6 months ago

    That’s true, but also a little more complicated than that I think. At least one of the reasons Israel was able to extract so much aid from the US to begin with was the threat they could align with the Soviet Union (initially one of the biggest supporters of Israel, and first to recognize them as a state officially in 1947, though they had a few others had unofficially recognized them by then). Stalin had a zionist foreign policy, despite (or maybe because of) being antisemitic himself. Though Soviets and Israel largely schismed in 1967 and the Soviet union began throwing its funding behind the surrounding Arab states.

    Relations warmed in the 90s again but have been up and down since. But there has been a lot of Russian immigration to Isreal. Russian is the third most spoken language in Israel.

    2011, Putin said: “Israel is, in fact, a special state to us. It is practically a Russian-speaking country. Israel is one of the few foreign countries that can be called Russian-speaking. It’s apparent that more than half of the population speaks Russian”.[38] Putin additionally claimed that Israel could be considered part of the Russian cultural world, and contended that “songs which are considered to be national Israeli songs in Israel are in fact Russian national songs”. He further stated that he regarded Russian-speaking Israeli citizens as his compatriots and part of the ‘Russian World’

    Israel at times has been quite friendly to Russia. It took a neutral stance on the Crimea annexation, infuriating the United States. Russia recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017. Israel refused to recognize Russians assassinating people abroad, infuriating the UK. Netanyahu has spoke often about his friendship with Putin. Israel refused to impose sanctions on Russia or send defensive weapons to Ukraine.

    I mean you could go on, it’s a complicated relationship, with especially Netanyahu favoring closer relations with Russia and trying to play both sides. Iran’s relationship with Russia certainly presents complications, but I don’t think Israel getting closer to Russia or at least using the threat of it to extract more from the United States is out of the question. They’re often trying to “play both sides” of the Russia and US divide to their benefit. Especially if Netanyahu remains in power.

    https://www.axios.com/2022/10/25/ukraine-russia-israel-netanyahu-putin-lapid-kuleba

    https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/netanyahu-governments-approach-russia-and-ukraine

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Russia_relations

    China and Israel have had surprisingly good relations too. And again, Netanyahu has consistently tried to make those closer, possibly to help keep US aid flowing.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-israeli-us-ties-troubled-china-says-xi-looking-forward-to-netanyahu-visit/

    Not saying the US shouldn’t cut off Isreal, please do, but the results may be surprising if that were to actually happen. I don’t think putin harbors any particular concerns for the plight of the Palestinian people.

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtoPC Gaming@lemmy.ca•AMD confirms Radeon GPU sales have nosedived
    42·
    6 months ago

    I’m not sure what you mean? This article is about AMD. Nvidia is the one that skimps on the vram. Amd’s 7800 xt has 16 gb of vram and is $500. Their most expensive gpu is the 7900 xtx for about $950 currently and it has 24 gb.

    Nvidia 4080 is over $1000 and has 16 gb of vram though.

    I agree gpus are too expensive, but if amd gpus go under, Nvidia will have even more power to price gouge. I’m rooting for Intel too to bring even more competition in.

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•IRS plans to increase audit rates of wealthy taxpayers by 50% | CNN Politics
    17·
    6 months ago

    Edit: sorry I think my first answer posted earlier was wrong, after more review I misunderstood “audit percentage,” it would be the percentage of taxpayers in those brackets who get audited, not the percentage of audits that bracket makes up of all audits. Below answer should be closer now.

    If you’re curious you can use the percentage from article and do simple math to find the number.

    Those making more than $10 million will go from 11% of them being audited to 16.5%. And we can get data on tax return audit actual numbers below.

    https://www.irs.gov/statistics/compliance-presence

    So diving back to the numbers, there were 3,353 audits of individuals make $10 million or more in 2023, meaning if the audit rate was 11% there were would be about 30,481 individuals total in this bracket that filed that year. So the higher audit rate would bring it to a total of about 5,029 audits of those making ten million or more, assuming the number of audits and number of people filing in that bracket are constant.

    Also here are the audit rates by tax bracket for 2022 and 2021.

    https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/statement-for-updated-audit-rates-ty-19.pdf

    The $10 million plus bracket went from only 2% audited in 2021 to 8% audited in 2022. Wonder what changed between those years…

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•Second Boeing whistleblower dies in less than two months
    46·
    6 months ago

    MRSA is just a version of staph aureus that is resistant to some common antibiotics. The antibiotic resistant version is common everywhere now since we use so much antibiotics. The antibiotic resistant version doesn’t make someone sicker in and of itself than the non resistant version, it just doesn’t respond to some antibiotics. From context I gather this was MRSA pneumonia.

    Staph aureus lives on all of our skin, mouth and external surfaces. It’s not like something you catch, it’s something that’s already there and takes advantage of an opening, like a wound, lungs already damaged by a recent flu virus or something, or a weakened immune system. It’s common that people in the hospital get staph infections, because they’re already there for something else making them sick that gives staph an opening. Strokes are also more common in hospitalized patients that are sick with other things. Strokes usually aren’t directly related to an infection, but the pro inflammatory response can increase clotting and make a stroke more likely. Strokes also can inversely make pneumonia more likely, if you have trouble swallowing and saliva and secretions are going down the wrong tube, then it creates an easy way for bacteria from your mouth like staph to get to the lungs and start up a pneumonia.

    Tldr: MRSA is on your skin right now, don’t worry about it too much, don’t overuse antibiotics

  • Ranvier@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.world•Court blocks Louisiana's congressional map with a second majority-Black district
    14·
    6 months ago

    Yes that’s what happened. One court slapped it down for unfairly reducing minority representation in violation of the voting rights act, so this map was drawn to increase minority representation. Now these two judges struck down the new map saying basically “I think it should be unconstitutional to consider race at all when drawing districts, even if it’s to make sure they aren’t being unfairly diluted, voting rights act is unconstitutional.” It’s supreme court bait to try and get them to strike down more of the voting rights act with their same reasoning they used to strike down affirmative action policies. If the supreme court decides to take this up eventually, I’d say the voting rights act days are numbered unfortunately with this court.