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Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

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234 points Eumenes | 4 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jongjong ◴[21 Nov 24 00:06 UTC] No.42199553[source]▶
As a coder, I'm realising more and more that the human body isn't so different from a computer. When you try to fix something without having complete understanding of all the relevant parts of the system, you will invariably introduce new issues. With a machine as complex as the human body, it seems inevitable that the field of medicine would be a game of whac-a-mole. Finding solutions which don't create new problems is hard and should not be taken for granted.
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1. kylehotchkiss ◴[21 Nov 24 00:13 UTC] No.42199613[source]▶
Add on that there is no complete understanding of this system with all the Unknown Unknowns etc and you can see why we should test this stuff better before letting hims.com just disperse it across the american populace
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2. jongjong ◴[21 Nov 24 00:33 UTC] No.42199741[source]▶
Yes 100%. That's why I never understood the rollout of MRNA vaccines during COVID. It's like pushing a massive code change straight to production during peak traffic and without the normal phased rollout. I totally understand where conspiracy theorists are coming from. That didn't seem right.
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3. kylehotchkiss ◴[21 Nov 24 00:37 UTC] No.42199779[source]▶
yeah, it's too bad the tech didn't have a better way to gain peoples trust (through some other breakthrough with the normal set of clinical trials). I think the solve was impressive (tell cells to produce a protein that looks exactly the same as the viruses and place it outside the cell to piss off antibodies) but protein-protein interaction data is hard to come by. Maybe these guys can figure it out https://www.aalphabio.com
4. moduspol ◴[21 Nov 24 00:40 UTC] No.42199809[source]▶
Perhaps--though worth keeping in mind that the overwhelming alternative is just lifelong obesity, along with all the negative impacts from that.

At least at a societal level, some increased rates of pancreatitis and a little suboptimal muscle loss are peanuts compared to what high obesity rates do to people at scale.