Today's version of what's wrong with the medical system: https://www.salk.edu/news-release/new-method-predicts-will-respond-lithium-therapy/ was recently shared. The article is about a paper that successfully predicted which patients benefit from lithium supplementation.
It contains a very interesting quote:
“The fact that Gage’s group can replicate the hyperexcitability characteristic in neurons from additional bipolar disorder patients is very important. Findings like these are needed to utilize these cells to develop new drugs to treat mental illnesses.”
The naive person on the street might think that advances in predicting who reponds to lithium is important to allow doctors to give those patients lithium. That doesn't seem to be where the scientists see the value in this case. It's that the process helps with developing new drugs that can then be patented and given to patients.
Sorry, but this is absurdly unfair.
First, to be clear, the article itself very plainly doesn't take such a view; right from the headline, it leads with the obvious application of giving lithium to patients it's likely to help and not to patients it isn't likely to help.
Second, the article quotes from "the scientists" several times, and most of what they say is about the actual work and its value in predicting response to lithium treatment.
Third, there is obviously absolutely nothing wrong with seeing "might be useful in development of new dr...
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