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

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372 points Eumenes | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.239s | 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. ben7799 ◴[21 Nov 24 17:11 UTC] No.42206373[source]▶
I like the analogy that biologists are making code changes (especially with genetic therapies) without actually understanding the machine code specification or even having a copy of the source code.

It's like a hacker flipping bits in a binary trying to figure out what's going to happen.. except the hacker at least can look up the complete machine code.