All of Armand_Cognetta's Comments + Replies

These two byproducts are formaldehyde and formic acid; it sounds like formic acid is the really bad one.

Formaldehyde is much worse for you than formic acid (formate). Formaldehyde and acetaldehyde are both aldehydes. Aldehydes are a very reactive functional group that can covalently adduct DNA and proteins. This can cause all sorts of bad things. Formaldehyde is worse because a) it's more reactive (one less electron donating methyl group) and b) it can cross-link proteins/DNA because its basically able to react twice rather than just once like acetaldehyde... (read more)

1Maxwell Peterson
Interesting! The current Sonnet 3.5 agrees (for equivalent concentrations), for the same reason you've described, and I was about to update the essay with a correction, but then 4o argued that 1. formaldehyde is metabolized much more quickly, so has little time to do damage or build up, and 2. that it considers formic acid's inhibition of a critical enzyme (cytochrome c oxidase) in the mitochondrial electron transport chain to be pretty bad. Or maybe a better summary of 4o's argument is "In equivalent concentrations, formaldehyde is worse, but the differences in rapidity of metabolization mean formic acid builds up more and causes more damage in real-life scenarios." So I've linked your comment in the relevant section, sort of waving my hands and succumbing to both-sides-ism. Interested in what you think about the rapidity-of-metabolization argument.

+1000

It’s certainly possible that a small subset of cancers are caused/initiated by a fungal infection, but it’s extremely unlikely that our basic understanding of what causes most cancer is wrong at this point.

Also an interesting recent paper showing the potential for cancer to be driven by epigenetically (rather than through direct DNA mutations).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07328-w

2J Bostock
Epigenetic cancers are super interesting, thanks for adding this! I vaguely remember hearing that there were some incredibly promising treatments for them, though I've not heard anything for the past five or ten years on that. Importantly for this post, they also fill out the (rare!) examples of mutation-free cancers that we've seen, while fitting comfortably within the DNA paradigm.

Loyal gave their IGF-1 inhibitor to healthy laboratory dogs (and possibly diabetic dogs, although it's hard to tell). Lo and behold, it lowered IGF-1. It probably also reduced insulin. They then looked at healthy pet dogs, and found that big dogs had higher levels of IGF-1, which is one of the reasons they're big. Small dogs had lower levels of IGF-1. Small dogs, as we all know, live longer than big dogs. Therefore, Loyal said, our IGF-1 inhibitor will extend the life of dogs.

Needless to say, this is bad science. Really bad science.

 

FYI there is a lon... (read more)

I don’t have anything substantive to say, but I just wanted to comment that I thought this was a wonderful read.