Meanwhile DOGE has cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. The US is shooting itself in the foot when it should be competing at its best.
The administration is also pressing for a 55% budget cut to the National Science Foundation. The NSF is the primary funding agency for engineering, physics, mathematics, chemistry and computer science, among many other fields. If there's any doubt about the seriousness of that situation, the director has resigned over it. When some worried that US world leadership in physical and life sciences may be surpassed in a generation, I doubt anyone realized it could happen in one year.
Indeed, now is the moment to step on the gas in biotech. The past 15 years have been nothing short of extraordinary in the field. We finally have the tools needed to effectively measure biology, manipulate biology, and increasingly predict biology. More recently, we have been able to turn more and more problems into computational problems.
With all of this coming together, we should be accelerating both public and private investment in biotechnology because we're getting closer and closer to transformative therapies. But...we're failing to rise to the occasion and meet the moment.
EMIRELADERO 1 hours ago [-]
Could you give some examples/directions for interesting things that have popped up in the period you're mentioning? Sounds like a fun time.
mac-mc 54 minutes ago [-]
Tools wise cheap sequencing is a big one.
DrAwdeOccarim 54 minutes ago [-]
Not op, but I’m in the field and can give you some things to read about:
- CAR-T
- CRISPR
- PRIME editing
- Base editing
- Modified mRNA
- PD-1 inhibitors
- On the cusp of personalized cancer vaccines
- ADCs
- Structure correctors
- Targeted protein degraders
- siRNAs
These have all really hit their stride in the past 15 years. Guess where all of them initially came from? Random ass government-funded academic research. Sure, you can split hairs with me on the 15 years and NIH/NSF etc funding, but it’s basically true. We are killing the golden goose…
12 minutes ago [-]
saturdaysaint 3 hours ago [-]
Fascinating, then, how the head of DOGE has deep financial interests in China. It’s really not out of bounds to suggest that his benefactors could’ve pulled some strings to kneecap the US.
ToucanLoucan 1 hours ago [-]
Never attribute to malice what is equally explained by incompetence, and these morons have been openly saying this is what they want to do for years.
We’re so unbelievably fucked.
Loughla 39 minutes ago [-]
No. No. That no longer applies, and I would argue never applies to a publicly funded entity like the federal government. When you're spending public dollars there is zero difference between incompetence and malice.
This administration has shown that it absolutely isn't incompetent. It's getting stuff done. Which means it's malice. Guaranteed. We're watching a self made disaster where few will profit, but will profit ENORMOUSLY.
oldpersonintx 27 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
eastbound 4 hours ago [-]
It was this or the left in power, with flawed research aimed at goals which aren’t ours, so everyone opted for this. We couldn’t go on with 3 trillion dollars debt every semester anyway, and a new term would have drifted anyway. To repeat: The current situation makes no economic sense, but the opposite was way worse, visibly enough that people voted for it even after being discouraged from it.
biophysboy 4 hours ago [-]
What do you think the research goals of the NIH are? Why do you think the debt is decreasing now?
munchler 4 hours ago [-]
Give me a freaking break. One side is carrying on the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and secular humanism, while the other is trying to drag us back to the dark ages of superstition and fear. It has nothing to do with political “left” and “right” anymore. It’s just sane vs. insane.
dingnuts 3 hours ago [-]
your comment would have a lot more weight if the grandparent hadn't been flagged and removed by people who don't like to read things they disagree with!
How am I supposed to know what arguments to expect from MAGA if you people censor what they have to say?
Censorship isn't helping your cause! It just makes your side look weak and scared.
biophysboy 3 hours ago [-]
I agree HN hides comments/posts too quickly, but the main issue here is that you can easily google federal outlays by month. This is an extremely easy thing to do. Unless you don't believe the data collected, there's nothing to debate. Why don't we have a debate about what color the sky is, or what 1+1 is?
blargey 18 minutes ago [-]
What are people supposed to argue with the sort of person that claims destroying 2B of federal science funding is justified solely by alleviating 0.001% of the 1.83T deficit - aka accomplishing nothing?
There's nothing to be aware of, nothing to prepare for, it's an "argument" that destroys itself with simple division. (Taking their grossly exaggerated "3T per semester" deficit number - combining the 2020 peak in annual deficit and casually doubling it - at face value only makes the 2B from the NSF an even more insignificant 0.00033%)
I find nothing revelatory about it. Just another person that wants to vandalize anything associated with their vague meme-complex of woke-lib-fed-science-international stuff.
Rzor 3 hours ago [-]
Go to your profile settings and change showdead from "no" to "yes".
gherkinnn 3 hours ago [-]
You can adjust the HN settings to show flagged and dead comments.
It was a rubbish comment.
lurk2 41 minutes ago [-]
Flagging isn’t a super downvote for bad comments, it’s for posts that break the site guidelines, which the grandparent comment did not.
codybontecou 3 hours ago [-]
TIL. Thanks for this.
munchler 3 hours ago [-]
FWIW, I agree with you. It was an absurd comment, but it shouldn't have been flagged (and I wasn't the one who flagged it).
gotoeleven 2 hours ago [-]
I'd honestly love to have a real discussion with people about this topic. HN comment sections, as imperfect as they may be, are afaik about the only place left on the internet where somewhat fact-based discussions of contentious topics happen.
The flagged comment is pretty inscrutable but I think I can explain the overall sentiment a bit better: half the country is under the impression that much of the science spending in this country is wasteful or even pernicious. They hear stories about studies of "racist highways" and "periods in transgender men," or the CDC claiming racism and gun control are diseases it should control, and think "why am I paying for this?". Combine this with the perception that the science establishment really shat the bed in their response to covid--lying about its origins, lying about the efficacy of masks, lying about the efficacy of the vaccine, lying about two more weeks, pushing ineffective and harmful lockdowns, etc--and half the country is ready to burn the whole thing down.
I, personally, know that science in general is a great good and should be funded. But the craziness, corruption, and dishonesty have to be excised or people are not going to support it.
To your comment in particular, the people supportive of these cuts don't think they're dragging us back to the dark ages. They think they're excising a tumor.
veqq 30 minutes ago [-]
> I'd honestly love to have a real discussion with people about this topic
I don't think most here would disagree about the perceptions that each side has. The problem is that is imperfect a lens to reality they are, it sure seems like the one side has embraced much of the fundamentals of QAnon even if most haven't realized it.
munchler 1 hours ago [-]
I'm happy to have this discussion, but I think you're making a false equivalence between the two sides. The examples you provided of liberal scientific overreach are either false or exaggerated. On the other side, you have an anti-vaxxer running the Department of Health and a president who suggested ingesting bleach to treat covid.
To respond to your examples specifically:
* Racist highways: I don't know what this is about.
* Periods in transgender men: This is a small, nuanced issue, not something worth destroying civilization over.
* Racism is a disease: Again, not familiar with this.
* Gun violence is a disease: It is the leading cause of death among children in this country, so treating it as an epidemic makes some sense. Should the CDC just pretend it's not happening?
* Lying about the origins of covid: Not sure who lied about this. The actual origin may never be known, but it most likely evolved from a disease that affected animals in Asia. There is no evidence that it was developed deliberately by China as a bioweapon.
* Lying about the efficacy of masks: Again, not sure what lie you're referring to. Masking was a rational response to an unknown virus. Since covid is a highly contagious respiratory disease, too much masking is certainly better than not enough masking.
* Lying about the efficacy of the vaccine: Again, not sure what lie you're referring to. The covid vaccines saved many thousands of lives.
* Pushing ineffective and harmful lockdowns: This was another rational response to an unknown virus. Lockdowns saved lives, even though they caused huge disruptions.
Your claim that the scientific community overreacted to covid is particularly unjustified and concerning to me. People like Anthony Fauci should be celebrated as heroes, not vilified.
Loughla 34 minutes ago [-]
>Lockdowns saved lives, even though they caused huge disruptions.
The problem with this argument and op's is that they're starting from different baselines. This next sentence is not meant to be as judgy as it sounds I'm afraid.
But your context is that lives are worth more than economic problems. The counterpoint that exists is that other people's lives aren't a valuable as my livelihood and income.
This is why rational debate breaks down so very quickly. We don't even have the same starting point anymore, let alone view of the facts at hand.
munchler 28 minutes ago [-]
I think one can make a rational argument that the cost of the lockdowns was not worth the lives saved. I probably wouldn't agree with that argument, but I'd certainly hear it out, especially with regard to the impact on children's education.
The problem is that the current administration isn't interested in (or perhaps capable of) making rational arguments at all.
bethekidyouwant 6 minutes ago [-]
Was the last one? In quebec we under curfew for two years.
lurk2 44 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
munchler 34 minutes ago [-]
I'll tell you what: I'll admit that one side has put too much emphasis on the freedom to choose one's sexual identity if you'll admit that the other side has put too much emphasis on resisting such choices.
miki123211 2 hours ago [-]
China's population is almost twice that of the US and EU combined. If what you're lacking for is patients, there's no better place to go to.
Not only that, but we're also a lot more obsessed with patient privacy. If somebody dies of cancer, there's no headline news about them dying of a cancelled trial, even if that's actually what happened. If patient data leaks, there's both a PR nightmare and legal consequences for the institution. That drives priorities.
I wouldn't be surprised if (some) Chinese researches are allowed to SELECT * from citizens where disease = 'bone_cancer', whereas researchers in the US have to send people to waiting rooms in hopes of catching an eligible patient[1]. Unless this gets changed, things won't get better.
We really need to start optimizing for min(deaths) instead of min(bad_pr) or min(outrage). That's a genuinely hard problem in a democratic society that respects the right to free speech (which, to be clear, is a very good society to live in IMO). In a way, it's a good problem to have.
[1] is a really good and accessible overview of why drug trials are so hard and what could be done to make them easier, it's worth checking out for anybody who wants to dive deeper into the subject.
I strongly disagree. There is no need for humans to be immortal, and there is nothing wrong with tacking healthcare research to public opinion at a bare minimum. If nothing else, it helps ensure our medical care doesn’t veer too far off track.
Veedrac 1 days ago [-]
So much of policy success comes down to doing obvious and reasonable things, and most of the problem is how to incentivize making those choices. For all China's flaws, they've figured this out.
The best news here is that we might finally have a prosaic means to escape our modern-era applied biotech stagnation, the same way solar has appeared as a means to kick the feet out of traditional energy sources. China is pretty new to being an R&D powerhouse, but there are few more worthy causes.
narrator 4 hours ago [-]
The best outcome for the current China/U.S conflict is lots of peaceful competition that forces each society to innovate.
kccqzy 4 hours ago [-]
Well during the Cold War with U.S./USSR conflict there was a lot of competition that heralded many new technologies, especially the dual use technologies that are good for both civilian and military uses. I can imagine something happening again if the U.S. had good leadership.
boplicity 38 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that the U.S. has bad media focused on being "right" over actual truth. (See Fox News and the many far-right "alt news" organizationns.) This lack of care for the truth is the foundation the U.S. political system rests on top of. Without fixing that foundation, U.S. leadership will continue to either be terrible, or terribly constrained. Add in unlimited political funding from anonymous people/organizations, and the situation is only more impossible to fix. Good U.S. leadership is a pipedream, unfortunately.
henry2023 3 hours ago [-]
One of the parties involved already decided they don't event wanna try to compete.
1 days ago [-]
tway223 1 hours ago [-]
China’s success is not because of the policies but rather despite of them. Though not sure how sustainable these successes would be.
tehjoker 58 minutes ago [-]
How on earth can you possibly claim that when China was a peasant society that was dicked over for a hundred years by western powers addicting them to opium? Obviously their careful planning and industrialization strategy is working.
tway223 39 minutes ago [-]
There is no careful planning. Just take a look at the waste, the debts and the rapid policy changes. It is more like industrial Darwinism at scale. The main fuel was mainly WTO , export and slavery labor. The industrialization in my opinion is a by product of that process.
tehjoker 33 minutes ago [-]
This is a highly propagandized view of China. Their industrial strategy was to get western capitalists to support industrializing the country by offering cheaper labor, but without surrendering control of the country to them, but now wages have risen quite substantially and their country is industrialized.
The western capitalists are now pissed that china didn't "liberalize" and let them take control of the country and are attempting to retaliate. This is why you have imbibed this propaganda that they created.
holoduke 2 hours ago [-]
Just a walk in a random big city in China reveals how fast they are progressing. The speed of things changing is ridiculous. In almost every field they are getting better. And fast. Thats what you can achieve when your country has 40 years of mass production experience. The thing I hope most for is that China gets its own high performing chips so that companies like Nvidia really get a competitor.
mmooss 3 hours ago [-]
Competing with it is a problem for conservativism. Some admittedly loose reasoning:
Conservativism preserves currently widely accepted structures, including ideas, by ridiculing and excluding new ones; social structures, by outlawing / persecuting / demonizing new ones as a threat to 'our traditions' and 'way of life'; businesses, through tariffs and other anti-competitive measures - the House GOP is considering a bill that reduces antitrust powers, for example; existing economic sectors, by government picking winners and funding them, limiting the economy to what is popular and that the government already understands, such as manufacturing; etc.
Remember the land of the individual, of personal freedom, of opportunity, that by its culture generated invention and innovation that other places, without that culture, couldn't match. What China, which is limited by central control, is doing is copying well-established innovations - a biotech industry that relies on clinical trials. Cutting edge stuff - decades ago.
What has made the US successful is creating, innovating, and moving on to the next thing - things the government and most of the public are far behind on. Look at the boom in the IT industry over the last several decades (also no longer cutting edge except in limited ways).
How can that happen now? The US has currently embraced relatively extreme conservatism. People are afraid to offer challenging ideas, and make their money from rent and from squeezing revenue from old ideas (the stereotypical private equity model). They can't go anywhere except by pleasing the oligarchy, now including the government.
dlisboa 3 hours ago [-]
> Remember the land of the individual, of personal freedom, of opportunity, that by its culture generated invention and innovation that other places, without that culture, couldn't match. What China, which is limited by central control, is doing is copying well-established innovations
They don’t seem to be limited by it at all and in many areas of high tech innovation they are years ahead.
It’s very hard to argue that their EV market, for instance, is not an example of competitiveness driving innovation, which is supposedly the hallmark of the free market.
vladms 3 hours ago [-]
While agree with the whole analysis, I do wonder if most/enough/all the ones supporting the regime change in US are really conservatives ("embraced extreme conservatism") or they just feel/are "left behind" hence they want any change. People might not care who is in power (although they will suffer the consequences), but if after 4 years they do not live better they will say "let's change" - without really checking what is the alternative...
In the end, alternation of rulers is probably on average healthier than having the same guys over and over, but it is no guarantee of success.
theLiminator 2 hours ago [-]
I personally think you're right. I think that in general a lot of people want change for the sake of change if they're unhappy (or often even if they're happy).
buyucu 4 hours ago [-]
China is having a boom in everything, not just in clinical trials.
kudalf 1 hours ago [-]
There’s no evidence that “Chinese trials” or intentional testing on humans caused the outbreak. Investigations by the World Health Organization and independent scientists have not found proof of deliberate origin.
goalieca 44 minutes ago [-]
You seem like a bot given 1 comment in 3 years and it was about this. Your AI misinterpreted the GP and responded to something not asked.
3 hours ago [-]
486sx33 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
a2dam 1 hours ago [-]
What are you talking about?
monero-xmr 31 minutes ago [-]
If China actually makes pharmaceutical breakthroughs, the West should immediately steal them and invalidate any claims of patents. They do not respect US intellectual property rights
tway223 19 minutes ago [-]
The west actually had quite some deals with them recently. If not for the trade war there could’ve been a lot more. To some extent it is like the Temu vibe.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nih-layoffs-budget-cuts-med...
https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-director-resign-...
With all of this coming together, we should be accelerating both public and private investment in biotechnology because we're getting closer and closer to transformative therapies. But...we're failing to rise to the occasion and meet the moment.
- CAR-T
- CRISPR
- PRIME editing
- Base editing
- Modified mRNA
- PD-1 inhibitors
- On the cusp of personalized cancer vaccines
- ADCs
- Structure correctors
- Targeted protein degraders
- siRNAs
These have all really hit their stride in the past 15 years. Guess where all of them initially came from? Random ass government-funded academic research. Sure, you can split hairs with me on the 15 years and NIH/NSF etc funding, but it’s basically true. We are killing the golden goose…
We’re so unbelievably fucked.
This administration has shown that it absolutely isn't incompetent. It's getting stuff done. Which means it's malice. Guaranteed. We're watching a self made disaster where few will profit, but will profit ENORMOUSLY.
How am I supposed to know what arguments to expect from MAGA if you people censor what they have to say?
Censorship isn't helping your cause! It just makes your side look weak and scared.
There's nothing to be aware of, nothing to prepare for, it's an "argument" that destroys itself with simple division. (Taking their grossly exaggerated "3T per semester" deficit number - combining the 2020 peak in annual deficit and casually doubling it - at face value only makes the 2B from the NSF an even more insignificant 0.00033%)
I find nothing revelatory about it. Just another person that wants to vandalize anything associated with their vague meme-complex of woke-lib-fed-science-international stuff.
It was a rubbish comment.
The flagged comment is pretty inscrutable but I think I can explain the overall sentiment a bit better: half the country is under the impression that much of the science spending in this country is wasteful or even pernicious. They hear stories about studies of "racist highways" and "periods in transgender men," or the CDC claiming racism and gun control are diseases it should control, and think "why am I paying for this?". Combine this with the perception that the science establishment really shat the bed in their response to covid--lying about its origins, lying about the efficacy of masks, lying about the efficacy of the vaccine, lying about two more weeks, pushing ineffective and harmful lockdowns, etc--and half the country is ready to burn the whole thing down.
I, personally, know that science in general is a great good and should be funded. But the craziness, corruption, and dishonesty have to be excised or people are not going to support it.
To your comment in particular, the people supportive of these cuts don't think they're dragging us back to the dark ages. They think they're excising a tumor.
https://www.themotte.org/
To respond to your examples specifically:
* Racist highways: I don't know what this is about.
* Periods in transgender men: This is a small, nuanced issue, not something worth destroying civilization over.
* Racism is a disease: Again, not familiar with this.
* Gun violence is a disease: It is the leading cause of death among children in this country, so treating it as an epidemic makes some sense. Should the CDC just pretend it's not happening?
* Lying about the origins of covid: Not sure who lied about this. The actual origin may never be known, but it most likely evolved from a disease that affected animals in Asia. There is no evidence that it was developed deliberately by China as a bioweapon.
* Lying about the efficacy of masks: Again, not sure what lie you're referring to. Masking was a rational response to an unknown virus. Since covid is a highly contagious respiratory disease, too much masking is certainly better than not enough masking.
* Lying about the efficacy of the vaccine: Again, not sure what lie you're referring to. The covid vaccines saved many thousands of lives.
* Pushing ineffective and harmful lockdowns: This was another rational response to an unknown virus. Lockdowns saved lives, even though they caused huge disruptions.
Your claim that the scientific community overreacted to covid is particularly unjustified and concerning to me. People like Anthony Fauci should be celebrated as heroes, not vilified.
The problem with this argument and op's is that they're starting from different baselines. This next sentence is not meant to be as judgy as it sounds I'm afraid.
But your context is that lives are worth more than economic problems. The counterpoint that exists is that other people's lives aren't a valuable as my livelihood and income.
This is why rational debate breaks down so very quickly. We don't even have the same starting point anymore, let alone view of the facts at hand.
The problem is that the current administration isn't interested in (or perhaps capable of) making rational arguments at all.
Not only that, but we're also a lot more obsessed with patient privacy. If somebody dies of cancer, there's no headline news about them dying of a cancelled trial, even if that's actually what happened. If patient data leaks, there's both a PR nightmare and legal consequences for the institution. That drives priorities.
I wouldn't be surprised if (some) Chinese researches are allowed to SELECT * from citizens where disease = 'bone_cancer', whereas researchers in the US have to send people to waiting rooms in hopes of catching an eligible patient[1]. Unless this gets changed, things won't get better.
We really need to start optimizing for min(deaths) instead of min(bad_pr) or min(outrage). That's a genuinely hard problem in a democratic society that respects the right to free speech (which, to be clear, is a very good society to live in IMO). In a way, it's a good problem to have.
[1] is a really good and accessible overview of why drug trials are so hard and what could be done to make them easier, it's worth checking out for anybody who wants to dive deeper into the subject.
[1] https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/drug-developm...
The best news here is that we might finally have a prosaic means to escape our modern-era applied biotech stagnation, the same way solar has appeared as a means to kick the feet out of traditional energy sources. China is pretty new to being an R&D powerhouse, but there are few more worthy causes.
The western capitalists are now pissed that china didn't "liberalize" and let them take control of the country and are attempting to retaliate. This is why you have imbibed this propaganda that they created.
Conservativism preserves currently widely accepted structures, including ideas, by ridiculing and excluding new ones; social structures, by outlawing / persecuting / demonizing new ones as a threat to 'our traditions' and 'way of life'; businesses, through tariffs and other anti-competitive measures - the House GOP is considering a bill that reduces antitrust powers, for example; existing economic sectors, by government picking winners and funding them, limiting the economy to what is popular and that the government already understands, such as manufacturing; etc.
Remember the land of the individual, of personal freedom, of opportunity, that by its culture generated invention and innovation that other places, without that culture, couldn't match. What China, which is limited by central control, is doing is copying well-established innovations - a biotech industry that relies on clinical trials. Cutting edge stuff - decades ago.
What has made the US successful is creating, innovating, and moving on to the next thing - things the government and most of the public are far behind on. Look at the boom in the IT industry over the last several decades (also no longer cutting edge except in limited ways).
How can that happen now? The US has currently embraced relatively extreme conservatism. People are afraid to offer challenging ideas, and make their money from rent and from squeezing revenue from old ideas (the stereotypical private equity model). They can't go anywhere except by pleasing the oligarchy, now including the government.
They don’t seem to be limited by it at all and in many areas of high tech innovation they are years ahead.
It’s very hard to argue that their EV market, for instance, is not an example of competitiveness driving innovation, which is supposedly the hallmark of the free market.
In the end, alternation of rulers is probably on average healthier than having the same guys over and over, but it is no guarantee of success.