[HN Gopher] Researchers discover new salivary glands in the huma...
___________________________________________________________________
Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
Author : smitty1e
Score : 298 points
Date : 2020-10-21 09:05 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| I find this weirdly amazing, as to this day I was reading some
| medical news and documentaries where it was said that entire
| human bodies were sliced by millimetre slices. So, somehow I
| always imagined that each part of body and tissue is 100% known
| and that only left is to find out what are inner workings on the
| nano-meter scale, deep molecular levels or genetic level.
|
| But in 2018 there was a similar news about Interstitium:
| https://www.livescience.com/62128-interstitium-organ.html
|
| In 2017 there was mesentery:
| https://www.livescience.com/57370-mesentery-new-organ-identi...
|
| Now we have this. So, reading this left me with one though
| "hidden in plain sight" and wondering what else is there.
| justinclift wrote:
| There's also this: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-
| releases/nih-researcher...
| tuatoru wrote:
| From Wikipedia: "The total fluid volume of the interstitium
| during health is about 20% of body weight".
|
| Wow. How could we possibly have missed this? Medical
| researchers must tend non-quantitative.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Putting aside your insult to medical researchers, it's not
| that they couldn't account for 20% of body weight. They knew
| there was fluid around cells, but the tissue sampling method
| would not preserve it so they couldn't inspect it. With the
| new sampling method they could see the structure, and
| realized these are more like connected spaces filled with
| fluid rather than small individual pockets.
|
| >Although researchers already knew that there is fluid
| between individual cells, the idea of a larger, connected
| interstitium -- in which there are fluid-filled spaces within
| tissues -- had been described only vaguely in the literature,
| Theise said. The new study, he said, expands the concept of
| the interstitium by showing these structured, fluid-filled
| spaces within tissues, and is the first to define the
| interstitium as an organ in and of itself.
| techsin101 wrote:
| https://www.livescience.com/37348-new-layer-discovered-in-hu...
|
| new eye layer
| julianlam wrote:
| (2013) https://www.livescience.com/40981-new-ligament-found-in-
| huma...
|
| A new ligament discovered next to the ACL
| techsin101 wrote:
| lymphatic system connected to brain
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601122445.h...
| simonh wrote:
| We know there's stuff there, but we don't necessarily know what
| all of it does. In this case the tissue in question was
| probably thought to be part of a known larger structure, but
| now it turns out it has a distinct function. Slices aren't
| going to tell you that.
| Balgair wrote:
| On top of that, not every one has the same tissues in the
| same places, or the same tissues _at all_. Most famous is the
| _palmaris longus_ muscle in the arm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaris_longus_muscle
|
| ~14% of humans lack this muscle.
|
| Other deviations range from colorblindness all the way to
| lack of a cerebellum entirely.
|
| Humans are quite variable, even when healthy.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| TIL I'm missing a muscle.
| wadkar wrote:
| To phrase it another way: form is different than function
| teawrecks wrote:
| Well I guess you could say the Neuralinks that Musk implanted
| in everyone are hidden in plain sight. We're just programmed to
| not notice them ;)
| rbanffy wrote:
| That we still find new structures within our own bodies should
| be deeply troubling to anyone in the medical sciences.
|
| I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that
| bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the first
| place.
| enriquto wrote:
| > I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that
| bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the
| first place.
|
| If anything, this shows that biology and medicine are
| incomprehensibly more complex than computer science, and that
| their practitioners are true hackers!
| sneak wrote:
| It's deeply troubling to me _not_ in the medical sciences.
|
| We know so startlingly little about how our own machines work
| in many ways.
| oblio wrote:
| Our field is vastly simpler than medicine. We're working on
| the edge of theory and practice is much, much, much messier.
|
| Cut it out with the arrogance.
|
| http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-
| surprising-...
| boringg wrote:
| Agreed. Though, to be fair, I have met my share of arrogant
| medical practitioners.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I'm sure, but in the case of medical practitioners, that
| arrogance may be borne by confidence rather than
| ignorance. You certainly need to be confident in your
| abilities if you're going to take the responsibility of
| someone's health in your hands.
| [deleted]
| boringg wrote:
| I don't disagree that they need to be confident in
| dealing with people's health. In the end arrogance born
| from confidence is still arrogance and I would argue
| (understandably unsubstantiated and difficult to
| quantify) that it is pervasive in the medical community.
| achillesheels wrote:
| Frankly speaking, how could you judge? I am coming from a
| biomedical engineering advanced education from a top 10
| institution, mind you. And I can tell you the lack of
| mathematical completeness in medicine is very alarming. It
| is too pharmacologically driven without a fundamental
| appreciation of the electrical sciences being applied,
| well, anywhere in their disciplines.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, almost every field that's "lacking mathematical
| completeness" is generally more complex than those that
| are not lacking it.
|
| Real life is extremely fuzzy and ill-defined. Almost
| everything mathematical is a model and models are almost
| by definition, simpler than the thing they model.
|
| I'd be glad to be proven wrong within my lifetime and
| have someone come up with the Fundamental Laws of
| History, for example, fully defined from a mathematical
| point of view.
| achillesheels wrote:
| I would claim that the mathematical models of the
| electrical engineering sciences which permit frequency
| domain convolutions _empirically_ demonstrate "real life"
| is fuzzy because our sensible perceptions are
| bandlimited, and not because of Nature herself. We arrive
| at approximations because things are always in motion!
|
| And I'm in the process of writing a scientific work of
| human history in an evolutionary biological paradigm,
| justified by the linear time-invariant mechanics of
| dipole oscillations which are elemental to all natural
| phenomena.
| oblio wrote:
| Even if Nature were perfectly defined, which it might
| well be, I'd venture to say, without any proof, of
| course, that its mathematical definition could still be
| beyond our current or even future power of comprehension.
| achillesheels wrote:
| Fortunately, it's mathematical definition, were we to
| equate a science of Nature with a science of motion, is
| not. Euler's Formula characterizes all universal
| phenomena in time. The important judgment to make is in
| understanding our observation is an _effect_ of our brain
| processing, with everything reducible to discrete units
| of simple harmonic motion, ie quanta, in time.
| noir_lord wrote:
| > Almost everything mathematical is a model and models
| are almost by definition, simpler than the thing they
| model.
|
| "The map is not the terrain" is my favourite way of
| getting that across.
| musingsole wrote:
| Particularly in 2's complement :P
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Have you heard of ECC memory?
| jlg23 wrote:
| > I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that
| bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the
| first place.
|
| http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_by_b.
| ..
| rbanffy wrote:
| It HAD to be Lisp... :-)
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Yeah... and hearing some of those being related to the gut.
| I've been diagnosed with a condition this year without real,
| solid evidence for cause. Seeing some of the brightest
| doctors try and write off health matters to alcoholism in
| non-alcoholics was concerning. After even cursory, high-level
| reading of what those terms mean elf me to believe it's the
| favoured diagnosis when they're unsure of the diagnosis and
| hesitate at all costs to give the label "idiopathic" if
| possible because then it really means "we don't know".
|
| It's not reassuring.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There are a number of "bucket" diagnoses that you can get
| thrown into once other things are ruled out, because there
| simply is no way to test to confirm that is what they are.
|
| Most mental illnesses, but also physical ones like
| fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis have no definitive
| test.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| The concerning factor for me re: alcoholic diagnosis is
| that there _is_ typically a baseline for minimum
| consumption that has been tested and "proven". And that
| even said baseline isn't necessarily adhered to, and that
| bucket is used in _preference_ over more accurate, but
| less resolute, buckets (like idiopathy).
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I've been reasonably critical of medicos and medical
| science in posts to this article, but in all fairness I
| think this sort of thing happens in almost all
| professions.
|
| Everything from time constraints to lack of knowledge to
| incompetence and or a combination of these is often found
| in most walks of life.
|
| With medicine, we've a terribly complicated field, and
| like any profession, there is a range of competencies. I
| recall decades ago knowing a state director of health
| (the state's top doctor) and he said to me _' if you ever
| get really sick come to me and I'll put you in contact
| with the best advice available, as there are too many in
| this profession that I wouldn't give you a quarter for'._
|
| As I said, this is a problem with all professions,
| finding the best advice available, can, at times, be a
| daunting experience.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| That sucks. The thing to understand is that the vast
| majority of doctors don't have the mindset of scientists or
| even engineers. They're more like plumbers who have to
| triage/fix 400 houses a day.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > They're more like plumbers
|
| I get that. What I find disturbing is that even when
| _some_ doctors dedicate their lives to study anatomy, we
| still find a pair of salivary glands nobody has ever
| documented.
|
| It's not a rare malformation. It's something that's more
| or less behind each and every human nose on Earth and has
| been there for thousands of years.
| [deleted]
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| There's something to the parent comment, even though it's
| getting downvoted to oblivion. I'm a computer engineer turned
| biophysicist, so I've hit up against the "holy shit biology
| is so much more complicated than I could have imagined"
| realization. That said, should medical researchers be looking
| at their processes, incentives, etc. to figure out why such
| things have been missed, and how to find more "low-hanging
| fruit"
| rbanffy wrote:
| > even though it's getting downvoted to oblivion.
|
| This is why I invest to earn karma. So it can burn.
|
| > how to find more "low-hanging fruit"
|
| That we still have low hanging fruit (or fruit hiding
| behind our noses) after so many years of study is a bit
| concerning.
|
| It's like discovering you can turn the lamp to remove it
| from the socket instead of keeping your hand still and
| hiring two people to rotate the ladder.
| valenciarose wrote:
| You assume all bytes are eight bits, but that hasn't always
| been the case. Machines with variable byte sizes were
| relatively common in the 70s and early 80s. This is why so
| many RFCs use the word octet instead of byte.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I remember that. A 36 bit computer makes no sense until you
| realize people used octal a lot back then. And grouped
| switches in 3's instead of 4's.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Even now there are hardware architectures with non-8-bit
| bytes, typically DSPs.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Yeah, and I also remember when real parity checking was
| replaced with a special pseudo parity-pretend chip on many
| SIM modules. It was so designed to especially fool
| motherboards into thinking that parity was actually enabled
| and working when it was not.
|
| Yes, even the memory business had its sleazy carpetbaggers.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Of course it would be embarrassing to discover a ninth bit;
| humans invented, created, and placed the other 8 bits, along
| with the entire computing infrastructure around them.
|
| Humans did not invent the human body, so it's not
| embarrassing to discover something new--it's exciting. That's
| the whole point of science. Medical researchers certainly
| know that they still have a ton to learn about the human
| body.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| The point is that these days we're supposedly past finding
| 'large' physical chunks of the body--given a century's
| worth of diagnostics, x-rays, MRIs, etc.--and onto much
| more complicated matters such as how proteins are
| synthesized in human cells and how gut bacteria affects
| mental function and the like.
|
| This one is a bit like not realizing the wheels are missing
| off your car. Right, it ought to have been damn obvious
| ages ago.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's more like suddenly realizing there is a spare tire
| under the carpet in the trunk. Or that 5 is indeed
| divisible by 2, even though everyone said it wasn't and
| doctors never bothered to check.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > humans invented, created, and placed the other 8 bits,
|
| Humans did, but not you or me. What if they lied to us?
| What if we believed in those lies and never checked? ;-)
| grishka wrote:
| The thing with bytes, and everything else pertaining to
| computing, is that it's wholly invented by humans, so of
| course it's possible to obtain a complete enough mental image
| of things like CPUs given enough documentation. Human body,
| on the other hand, is literally alien technology because
| humans themselves didn't take any part in engineering it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Are you sure the CPU you are using now actually has the
| same number of registers that the ISA documentation says?
|
| Even here, we have surprises. Every modern x86 in use has
| thousands of errata pages in the specs.
| grishka wrote:
| Yes I know because I read about register renaming a while
| ago :)
| achillesheels wrote:
| Actually, you'd be surprised how plausible it is to diagram
| the human electrophysiology using electromechanical circuit
| analogs. Everything in the body signals electrically, and
| biological matter being piezoelectric has been known
| (probably not popularly) since the late 60's.
|
| Indeed, I am finishing up my dissertation applying
| electrical engineering theory to model cellular
| evolutionary biology predicated on digital signal
| processing theory to demonstrate natural selection
| progressively evolves adaptations with faster sampling
| rates of environmental radiation for greatest BIBO system
| stability.
| grishka wrote:
| It's not that. Yes it's all electrical and chemical and
| electrochemical and so on. The problem is not with
| finding a good visual/logical representation.
|
| You usually don't see connections between different
| things when you aren't actively looking for them, or when
| you haven't seen/thought those things to be related in
| the past. Since CPUs were designed by humans, your
| logical reasoning would usually work well when reverse
| engineering one, especially if you know the general ideas
| of how integrated circuits are constructed and what
| functional blocks a CPU is made of. Nature, on the other
| hand, has no logic. Your reasoning doesn't work with
| natural phenomena, and that's exactly what we're seeing
| in areas where experimentation and direct observation is
| hard, infeasible, or impossible.
| achillesheels wrote:
| As a matter of fact, Nature _does_ have logic. It's
| motion is principally geometrical and affords us the
| ability to recursively structure electrical signals
| harmonically, eg feedback amplification.
|
| Feedback circuits are vital to biological systems and
| prove my point.
| et2o wrote:
| Give me a break
| LocalH wrote:
| Why would it be troubling that there is more to learn? There
| is _always_ more to learn. If you were under the
| misconception that we knew _everything_ about the human body,
| then I'm glad you're now enlightened
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| It's about expectations. We obviously will never know
| everything about anything. Some things seem easier to
| discover than others. This seems like something easy to
| discover that has long since gone undiscovered.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's troubling to discover something that's been there for
| thousands of years, right behind our noses.
|
| Haven't we sliced a couple humans to sub-millimetric
| resolution?
| bgribble wrote:
| Funny you pick that as an example!
|
| I do seem to recall a very large cohort of programmers
| (LOCALE=en_us) finding themselves dumped through a rabbithole
| of wonder which turned the black-and-white scenery of the
| Land of ASCII to the kaliedoscopic technicolor of Unicode. We
| did, in fact, discover that there were extra bits on those
| characters that we had been pretending weren't there all
| along :)
| rbanffy wrote:
| And don't get me started about the concept of first and
| last names outside the US...
| starkd wrote:
| Nobody really knows how computers work.
| rbanffy wrote:
| That's more true than false.
| throwanem wrote:
| Bytes aren't real. Bodies are, and also have people living in
| them a lot of the time. It shouldn't come as a surprise or a
| concern, I think, that the imaginary and trivially simple
| thing is much easier to comprehend than the category of real
| and vastly complex things.
|
| (Anyway, some obsolete architectures actually did use nine-
| bit bytes.)
| intrasight wrote:
| >Bytes aren't real
|
| Following that reasoning, the mind isn't real either.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yours, maybe. Mine definitely isn't. Why would I want it
| to be?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Still easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for,
| which, by definition, we didn't, because in attentional terms,
| What You Know Is All There Is.
|
| The Visible Human Project
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPPjUtiAGYs
| sradman wrote:
| > ...the discovery gives us another target to avoid during
| radiation treatments for patients with cancer, as salivary glands
| are highly susceptible to damage from the therapy.
|
| The discovery, therefore, has practical uses.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The human body is complex; it's complicated. How many times have
| we heard, "I went to X different doctors and none could diagnosis
| me."
|
| That's not a knock on medicine or science, just a simple
| statement of fact. That is, there is plenty we have yet to
| understand.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| And if we do understand it, that doesn't mean a doctor knows
| about it.
|
| My father was in the hospital for two days with vertigo. He was
| so frustrated waiting for specialists to show up that he
| checked himself out.
|
| I was pissed - he's notoriously awful at listening to medical
| advice. I said, "Did you even wait for them to try the Epley
| maneuver?"[1] Turns out they didn't even suggest it. I only
| know about it because my grandmother has it done regularly for
| her vertigo. And it seems to have solved his problem.
|
| I'm sure it's already in the threads, but that recalls the old
| joke, "What do you call a medical student with a D average?"
|
| "Doctor."
|
| [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-
| and-t...
| roktiw wrote:
| I wonder can this lurker produce DMT
| projektfu wrote:
| I'm a little surprised they went to a press release but didn't
| say they identified a structure in a cadaver. So, at the moment,
| this is sort of like a geological feature that's only ever been
| seen using a satellite.
| flattone wrote:
| What does that mean? (Zero medical cadaver background, with
| regard tk the distance of validity between one or the other).
| Satellites are a lot more powerful (hehe) than our eyes, so my
| understanding Of your point failed.
| projektfu wrote:
| Basically both MRI and satellite imagery are forms of remote
| sensing. You want to have someone on the ground eventually to
| confirm your findings.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| Like Landsat island:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_Island
| roywiggins wrote:
| They did find it in two cadavers:
|
| "These tubarial glands were seen to exist in the PSMA PET/CT
| scans of all the 100 patients examined in the study, and
| physical investigations of two cadavers - one male and one
| female - also showed the mysterious bilateral structure,
| revealing macroscopically visible draining duct openings
| towards the nasopharyngeal wall."
| projektfu wrote:
| Ah. Thanks, i read the article but not carefully it seems.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I wonder if this sort of thing could be useful for fighting
| diseases that resist the blood/brain barrier.
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| A bit of a random, uneducated question, but somewhat related...
| For anatomists with a strong knowledge of both, which is more
| complicated?
|
| The human head, or the human gut?
|
| I suppose I'm wondering about the potential for something like
| this to happen again.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It wasn't hugely long ago that the mesentery was making the
| news as the newest official organ identified in the human body.
| It is in the gut:
|
| 2017: It's Official: A Brand-New Human Organ Has Been
| Classified
|
| https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-a-brand-new-human...
|
| The neurological system for the gut is so complex that it gets
| called a "second brain" in some literature.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Also, this book, _The Second Brain_ , is a bit older, but
| relevant:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Second-Brain-Groundbreaking-
| Understan...
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| I've read a little about the complexity of the gut and it's
| nervous system connections, but was just thinking of a rough
| comparison of the two sites.
|
| I mean, if you include the anatomy of brain, the head is
| conclusively more complicated.
|
| But if you consider the brain, and perhaps the nervous
| network to be a single, extremely complex part, then I
| suppose you'd still have to believe the head is the more
| complicated of the two, because of the eyes, and the array of
| muscles around the face...
|
| Was just musing, tbh.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I think a hard question to answer is "Where does the gut
| end and the contents of the gut begin?"
|
| Stomach acid is contents of the gut but also part of the
| digestive tract. An even more thorny issue: the microbiome,
| which is a hot topic in research.
|
| And that's a complication the head lacks.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Going up a meta-level, for different types of
| research/analysis, its also important to ask "when is it
| important to look at gut/contents of gut as separate" and
| "when should we use a systems understanding".
|
| My personal opinion is that modern medicine doesn't
| really like to think about the systems, because it's
| easier to look at something in isolation. Sometimes this
| is helpful - simply the problem space and you can
| simplify the solution - but much of the time it is
| inappropriate.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| In tribal cultures, "medicine men" are both doctors and
| spiritual leaders. Historically in the Western world,
| doctors were some of the best educated people in town and
| some of the wisest people in town and everybody knew each
| other in a small town. The doctor made house calls with
| his little black bag.
|
| Now doctors mostly don't make house calls because we use
| so much tech for diagnostics that you can't carry it with
| you. Star Trek's Dr. McCoy and his tricorder was modeled
| on the "little black bag" pattern of medicine and it
| married the idea of tech to that model and he could
| diagnose anything with the super advanced gadget in his
| hand while going to where the patient was. This is not
| how it has gone in real life.
|
| In the process of making house calls, a doctor casually
| picked up a lot of information by observation that didn't
| require him to ask questions. He saw how clean your house
| was. He saw if you lived alone or with family. Etc.
|
| Medicine has moved to a place where we treat people like
| specimens in a petri dish and as if their physical health
| is a separate question from the rest of their life. The
| reality is these are deeply intertwined and cannot be
| neatly separated.
|
| The systems we need to be looking at are not just systems
| within the body but how the systems those bodies exist
| within impact the human body. And we aren't even really
| thinking in that direction yet.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The lymph duct to the brain was only discovered in 2017. Prior to
| that, we had no idea how the brain clears waste and fights
| infections.
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/brain-c...
| drchiu wrote:
| Yeah I remember that! Did med school in the early 2000s and
| they glossed over this part.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Thought this was an Onion headline for a second :P
| [deleted]
| mrfusion wrote:
| Could this be the soul?
| exolymph wrote:
| Probably not? Why would you think that?
| toxicFork wrote:
| It was probably a joke. You know we're looking for the soul,
| right? Some say it's a part of the body. If this was the soul
| this would have made a lot of philosophers unhappy.
| Unfortunately it's just saliva. Maybe next time.
| arey_abhishek wrote:
| It amazes me that we are still discovering new features in our
| anatomy. I studied biological sciences in undergrad, and studying
| anatomy was like studying history because almost all of it was
| discovered by the 1950's.
| notRobot wrote:
| > Mysterious Organ Lurking in the Centre of the Head
|
| ... The brain?
|
| :P
|
| In all seriousness, this is really cool. It's incredible how we
| still keep finding out new things about our body. You'd've
| thought that there wouldn't be much left to find at the
| macroscopic level, and yet...
| escape_goat wrote:
| It's worth noting, for the sake of everyone here in the comments
| on a tl;dr tanget, that the organ is absolutely not new or
| 'mysterious' in the least. There are a pair of salivary glands at
| the back of the nose in a place no-one thought to look at them.
| They were discovered because they accumulated radioactive
| glucose, like the other salivary glands, to an extent that was
| visible when a fairly new and sophisticated scanning technique
| was used. They revealed macroscopic structure upon examination in
| two cadavers.
| aaron695 wrote:
| We don't know if the Japanese have longer intestines.
|
| https://medium.com/words-escape-us/are-japanese-intestines-l...
|
| I don't know if this Mysterious Organ will be real, but the fact
| it's up for discussion is the problem.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Question for those medical HN ppl: What is definition of organ? I
| mean before when people were doing surgeries and slicing through
| interstitium, mesentery or different glands, were surgeon
| thinking "i will just slice through this slimy thing that does
| not do anything" or there was more thought about it? Before
| people were removing on regular bases appendix or tonsil, now
| understanding about the role has changed... so
|
| How does something becomes an organ after 100 years of modern
| technology? Just to clarify I meant would it be possible in
| future that part of let say heart could become an organ?
| iguy wrote:
| Not a medical person, but I think this is much like asking
| "what's a species?". Nature is clearly clumpy, your body has
| one heart & two lungs & they have obviously different tissues &
| purposes. But precisely how many organs, and precisely where
| you draw the divides, is something we don't have sharp answers
| to. We adjust as we go along.
| saalweachter wrote:
| To add on to this, the question becomes "Is it useful to
| treat this part as a separate organ (sometimes)?"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The study was small, and examined a limited patient
| population_
|
| Curious if this is present in all humans or a local evolution.
| nl wrote:
| They examined 100 patients and two brains and it appeared in
| all of them.
|
| There are no instances of a new organ appearing in a local
| human population.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Some vestigial structures are missing on some people.
|
| For example the little muscles at the point of the ears
| (Darwin's tubercle). It has been documented to be present in
| about 10.5% of the Spanish adult population, 40% of Indian
| adults, and 58% of Swedish school children.
| nl wrote:
| I don't believe Darwin's tubercle is a muscle - it appears
| to be just variation in appearence (like connected ear
| lobes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_tubercle
|
| However, TIL about the Palmaris longus muscle which is
| absent in around 14% of people:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaris_longus_muscle
| egberts1 wrote:
| Is it just me, or shall we cue in the pyaneal gland from
| Reanimator, the movie?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| This paragraph in particular impresses me:
|
| _Preliminary data - based on a retrospective analysis of 723
| patients who underwent radiation treatment - seem to support the
| conclusion radiation delivered to the tubarial glands region
| results in greater complications for patients afterwards: a
| result that not only could benefit future oncology, but also
| seems to strengthen the case that these mysterious, overlooked
| structures really are salivary glands._
|
| So we already have existing data we can kind of "retrofit" to
| this new mental model and get meaningful feedback that this new
| conclusion seems to fit with verifiable experience. That's
| actually pretty darn cool for a variety of reasons.
| andix wrote:
| Is this for real, or just fake news?
| woliveirajr wrote:
| If there is some connection with salivary glands, doesn't that
| mean that infections from your mouth have a path right to the
| middle of your brain?
| drchiu wrote:
| I remember the cadaver labs during the school days. Really hard
| to spot certain (save for the really large organs which are
| obvious) unless you know what it is you're looking for. Sometimes
| an illustration tells you it should be there but the actual
| structure is... underwhelming or barely visible/damaged from
| years of specimen abuse. Can see how things like this can be
| missed.
| peteretep wrote:
| For some reason this reminds me of the joke: "If the surgeon
| cuts a vessel and knows the name of that vessel, the situation
| is serious; if the anaesthetist knows the name of the vessel
| the situation is irretrievable"
| drchiu wrote:
| Strangely enough, I find the anesthesiologist sometimes knows
| the name of the vessels as well as the surgeon, especially
| for the run of the mill surgeries. Because it usually turns a
| 20 minute operation to 60-90 minutes (the added time to fix
| the mistake and find the bleeder, and go to plan B), and they
| miss their coffee break as a result!
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| This is it. Most structures just look like meat.
|
| It's easy to spot them on a 3D render where they are bright
| yellow. In real life, it's just different textures of meat with
| slightly different hues.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| It seems almost unbelievable that in this day and age we could
| have missed something like this. In my opinion, it put modern
| medicine into perspective. I've suspected for some time that
| medicine is actually closer to the dark ages than we like to
| think it is, and this report seems like a good validation of that
| notion.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| > medicine is actually closer to the dark ages than we like to
| think it is
|
| I'm not sure it's entirely on point, but ever since my mother
| was almost murdered by medical malpractice, and then learning
| about exactly how bad (frequent and severe) medical malpractice
| is, it's extremely hard for me to not see it this way.
|
| Somewhere close to 300,000 people die a year from medical
| malpractice, give or take ~50k! Even adjusting for the elderly
| and comorbidities the number is still huge. I don't know why I
| never did, but it keep thinking I need to go buy and read Bruce
| Schneiers book about outliers[1]... it seems crazy how much we
| ignore much more concrete and repeated issues that cause death
| and love to focus on outliers that will probably never happen
| to us.
|
| 1. https://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society-
| Thriv...
| fwip wrote:
| This common factoid isn't actually true. The real number is
| almost certainly less than 10,000 people even with a generous
| definition, and probably closer to a few hundred annually.
|
| Further reading: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-
| medical-errors-really-t...
|
| Takeaway:
|
| > (1) [Adverse Effects of Medical Treatment] are not
| uncommon; (2) the vast majority of AEMTs that occur in
| patients who die aren't the primary cause of death; (3) only
| a relatively small fraction of AEMTs are due to misadventure
| or medical error; and (4) population-adjusted AEMT rates have
| been slowly decreasing
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Yes there are some diseases that can be treated very reliably
| but a large share of commonly occurring issues can't. Also
| given that modern medicine is largely based on statistics, I
| have doubts that the sophistication of statistics in use is
| really appropriate. I think Physics or Psychology do a lot
| better in that regard. That said, I think many diseases can be
| treated or prevented with a high success rate without any
| invasive procedure. For instance the risk of coronary heart
| disease can be lowered a lot with good diet and mild exercise.
| It surprises me that doctors never pro-actively mention how to
| prevent such lifestyle diseases until it's too late. Probably
| the subject of medicine needs to be broadened a bit.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| "Centuries of scientitic progress being held back by centuries
| of tradition" seems like an apt cliche to invoke.
| trollied wrote:
| One day in the distant future, people will look back at us
| having treated cancers with radiation & wonder what the hell we
| were thinking!
| projektfu wrote:
| Honestly, I think cytotoxic chemotherapy will be more
| shocking. Radiation oncology has made great strides in
| targeting the dose (cyberknife and other stereotactic
| approaches). Cytotoxic therapy is still basically poisoning
| everything and hoping the cancer dies first.
|
| Or, in the case of cancers like multiple myeloma, killing all
| immune cells and replacing the stem cells.
|
| The future of cancer therapy is likely to be heavily reliant
| on customization and precise drug delivery, to give an
| overwhelming dose of poison to the cancer without harming the
| patient.
| [deleted]
| jalk wrote:
| I hope they will know that there was some level of science
| (statistics) behind doing so, and not because someone just
| thought it might help
| et2o wrote:
| Laughable confirmation bias.
| friendlybus wrote:
| There are many people who espouse a bright and endless increase
| of medical power, combined with a utopia-lite for our current
| state of medical knowledge.
|
| There is a lot in the dark and we should not hesistate to point
| it out. It would be a lie to paper over the cracks with yet
| another affirmation about it all being figured out and we can
| go back to sleep.
| bantunes wrote:
| I feel like the fact this is rare, big news kind of negates
| your point.
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Agreed, though it also makes me think of the numerous cases
| of drugs developed with a specific purpose, but then
| afterwards found to have a completely different effect to
| what was originally intended.
|
| Medical science is an incredible thing, but science, by
| definition, does not have all the answers.
|
| A small part of me is actually somewhat surprised, that
| people (both lay, and professional) are surprised.
|
| Though I am not the best placed commentator to champion this
| view.
| majewsky wrote:
| > drugs developed with a specific purpose, but then
| afterwards found to have a completely different effect to
| what was originally intended
|
| I don't find that surprising. You have to do the early
| phases of drug development in model systems like cell
| cultures for practical reasons: It makes evidence obtained
| more reproducible and has less ethical concerns than
| experimenting on humans immediately. It's like how software
| components usually get implemented and tested in simplified
| environments (e.g. unit tests use doubles), and just like
| with drugs, sometimes we find that software components
| interact with each other in unexpected ways when combined
| into a whole.
| iguy wrote:
| What seems weird about this is that the process for
| deciding that an approved drug is useful for a certain
| condition (not the one it was intended for) is really
| informal, it seems to rely on common knowledge
| circulating in the guild.
|
| For the initial approval, we have this very formal
| process, the FDA wants this kind of data from trials of
| this size to show this statistical level, etc. All very
| scientific-looking.
|
| But once it's on the market, random doctors try it out
| for other conditions. If it seems to work they tell their
| buddies, tweak the mixtures, share anecdotes. If it
| becomes widespread, some industry club records this for
| the purpose of arguing with insurance companies. I am
| told this off-label use now constitutes the majority of
| drug prescriptions. All based on (as far as I can tell)
| no statistically driven testing at all, just stories.
|
| (To be clear, I'm not at all surprised that drugs have
| "off-target" effects, and may be very useful for things
| their inventor never imagines. I'm just a bit shocked how
| pre-modern our system for collecting this knowledge
| appears to be. But not an expert, and would love to know
| more.)
| majewsky wrote:
| > I'm just a bit shocked how pre-modern our system for
| collecting this knowledge appears to be.
|
| I'm not an expert, but I imagine any more advanced system
| would be extremely problematic from a data protection
| point of view (think HIPAA etc.). In a study, patients
| sign multiple pages of legalese to allow the researchers
| to collect all the required data. You don't have that
| with regular patients in a GP's office.
| iguy wrote:
| Yes that's a hurdle. But even without that, it seems hard
| to design a good system. If most of the doctors treat the
| very sick cases (among those diagnosed with X) with drugs
| Y+Z currently rumoured to work, how do you disentangle
| the causes of their poor outcomes?
|
| More generally, how do we know it isn't mostly garbage?
| That seems to be the consensus about most pre-20th-C
| medicine, and those guys weren't idiots, they were just
| trying things out and sharing ideas...
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| You can, almost randomly, take any well known, synthetic
| drug, and trace a wildly eclectic history of use.
|
| If anyone is interested, the history of anabolic steroids
| is almost comical...
| https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-
| reports/ster...
|
| And the period of time over which the change took place,
| is actually quite remarkable.
| gswdh wrote:
| As long as people are mortal, we are in the dark ages.
| edoloughlin wrote:
| _I 've suspected for some time that medicine is actually closer
| to the dark ages than we like to think it is_
|
| Every now and then I see a comment that makes me think HN is
| closer to Facebook than we like to think it is.
| unishark wrote:
| Medical research is devoted to diseases, particularly where
| there's confidence something can be done about it. It's easy to
| imagine science being weak on something if it doesn't cause
| life-threatening problems.
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| > I've suspected for some time that medicine is actually closer
| to the dark ages than we like to think it is
|
| What does that even mean? Nobody's claiming that modern
| medicine is anywhere close to perfect but the "dark ages"
| medicine was Humorism, blood letting and faith healing.
| Surgeons didn't start washing their hands before childbirth
| until the 19th century. It's really weird to look back at the
| mind-boggling progress we achieved in the past 200 years and
| conclude "we're basically still in the dark ages!"
| ben509 wrote:
| Humorism probably produced observable benefits just by
| encouraging people to eat a balanced diet. Its basic notion
| that you have different things in your body that need to be
| balanced is not wrong.
| ThePowerOfDirge wrote:
| Blood letting is still the treatment for iron overload.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Right but only because we know the mechanism of action and
| it's efficacy. It's also performed in a different manner to
| blood letting as a historical treatment.
| jankotek wrote:
| Leaches produce enzyme that prevents blood cloth from
| forming. It also improves oxygenation. For some wounds,
| leaches would protect leg or arm from amputation.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| * leeches
|
| Leaching is a process in which you percolate a liquid
| (like water) through something, and it picks up chemicals
| and carries them out. Brewing coffee, for instance.
| buck4roo wrote:
| "Rationally designed" drugs do this now. An example: Exjade
| ;
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferasirox
| garbagetime wrote:
| Imagine the following.
|
| Here's the spectrum of medical knowledge:
|
| -----------------------------------------
|
| Here's where we were in the dark ages:
|
| --|--------------------------------------
|
| Here's where we are now:
|
| -------|---------------------------------
|
| Here's where people like to think we are:
|
| ------------------|----------------------
|
| In this scenario it seems like what you're saying and what
| your parent said are both true (it is true both that medicine
| is much closer to the dark ages than we'd like to think, and
| also that we know a great deal more than we knew in the dark
| ages).
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| People can only see progress and have no idea where we
| actually are until they look back in retrospect, so I think
| it's more accurate to say:
|
| Here's where we were in the dark ages:
|
| -|---------------------------------------
|
| Here's where we are now:
|
| ---|-------------------------------------
|
| Here's where people thought we were in the dark ages:
|
| ----------------------------|------------
|
| Here's where people like to think we are today:
|
| ------------------------------|----------
| wadkar wrote:
| Progress doesn't end one day, it's a process. So what
| matters is the rate at which we make progress.
| JackFr wrote:
| Chuck Klosterman's book "But What If We're Wrong:
| Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past"
| examines this phenomenon, and while its difficult to make
| predictions (that's one of the takeaways) it's a terrific
| lens to look at both the present and the past.
|
| (One of my favorite chapters is imagining 1000 years into
| the future, where rock and roll is basically only
| remembered for one artist, who might that be? And why it
| won't be Elvis or the Beatles.)
| et2o wrote:
| Alright, but on the range from nothing to perfect, we
| are... Far more than 2x the dark ages. More like 1000x.
| JackFr wrote:
| That's not what Dr. McCoy thinks.
|
| "Dialysis? My God, is this the dark ages!"
| jpindar wrote:
| "Sewing people with needles and thread!"
| adriand wrote:
| But then we're in the dark ages for everything, except
| maybe siege warfare. So it becomes a meaningless comment.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| I could think of other examples. I mean, we know for sure
| that electrical motors are not going to be hugely more
| efficient, because then they will break conservation of
| energy and bunch of other laws of physics. So, by that
| measure we are not in dark ages
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yet we power them by burning coal.
| WJW wrote:
| What does that have to do with the efficiency of electric
| motors? They don't magically get more efficient if you
| power them with a wind turbine.
| adrianN wrote:
| Life would be pretty boring if it were different don't
| you think? If almost everything were already figured out
| after just a few centuries of the scientific method and
| we wouldn't expect any substantial improvements to be
| made ever.
| shock wrote:
| No, one's life would not be boring because of that.
| There's a difference between things being known to sience
| and _you_ knowing those things. Even now, you can live
| your full lifespan without getting bored just learning in
| depth what is already known to science.
| garbagetime wrote:
| How do you figure?
| yreg wrote:
| Yes, on a scale of _dark ages_ to understanding a field
| perfectly, it 's no surprise we are closer to the dark
| ages.
|
| Well, perhaps we understand basic algebra pretty well.
| LanceH wrote:
| Along these lines I've heard it said that "Doctors don't
| heal anyone. The get them to the point where their bodies
| can heal themselves." Sure, there are some exceptions where
| the body literally can't heal itself, like reattaching
| something, but the sentiment holds true most of the time.
|
| In another discussion bred from boredom where some friends
| and I were trying to define entire fields of study in a
| single sentence (Economics is the allocation of scarcity)
| one doctor said, "Medicine is about controlling swelling."
| His response (he was a surgeon) kind of made your point
| that we imagine that doctors are fixing things and he is
| saying that he spent most of his time trying to get the
| body to make it better and not worse.
| sy7ar wrote:
| I have to agree with this. Before I have to exhaust all the
| medical resources, in my mind, when people get sick, they
| go see a doctor, the doctor prescribes medicine, and
| medicine fixes problems. But in reality we're still largely
| relying on our own defense, e.g. COVID. We rarely have a
| drug that directly fixes our problem.
|
| I started having really bad insomnia more than a year ago.
| I went to see a bunch of doctors. Initially, I was given
| low dosage sleeping pills, which didn't help much. I went
| to a hospital to get a CT scan because I was having mad
| headaches, which my family doctor wouldn't refer me. The
| scan was normal. Finally, I found a doctor who's willing to
| refer me MRI scan. After waiting for couple of months, the
| result didn't turn up anything again. Keep in mind I've
| been suffering 2 - 3 hours sleep a day all these time. I
| also did sleep study, and sleep study mostly care about
| sleep apnea, so they couldn't identify any causes again.
| Then I went to see a psychiatrist, more sleeping pills,
| which are really antidepressants. Eventually, after a long
| wait, I was referred to a neurologist and sleep specialist.
| I've done so much research on sleep medicine at this point,
| I already knew what he's gonna prescribe me - sleep
| restriction therapy. That didn't really help altho I gave
| up after trying for two weeks. I intend to try it again but
| I can't attempt it now that I'm back to work. So one year
| later, I'm still messed up with no known cause.
|
| I know insomnia in my case is not a traditional disease,
| but it goes to show you that if you're not having one of
| the common diseases then you're shit out of luck.
|
| The human body's extremely complex, but instead of using
| proper debugging tools, doctors are mostly relying on
| "console logs" or "print statements". Even if a root cause
| is identified, often time we don't have the necessary tools
| to fix the problems.
| [deleted]
| korijn wrote:
| You seem to imply/think that there is a finite endpoint to
| your x-axis. I think that is the _real_ misconception here.
| garbagetime wrote:
| I think the point is equally well demonstrated if you add
| an ellipses to the right-hand side of the spectrum.
| fn1 wrote:
| Since that axis really cannot be constructed, I think a
| better way to present your sentiment is the following:
|
| Is it possible that we still miss a large discovery in
| medicine, akin to the introduction of evidence-based
| treatment, hygiene, inoculations or the discovery of DNA?
| kristopolous wrote:
| Absolutely, without question. Dozens, maybe hundreds of
| things that big.
|
| The arrogant assumption of an infinite wisdom of the
| present is one of the strongest there is.
|
| Ptolemaic astronomy looked right until Galileo came
| along. It matched observational measurements, just with
| an unhelpful set of assumptions. We're Ptolemy on
| countless things whose Galileos haven't been born yet.
|
| It's unsettling to think we're all stupid in ways we'll
| never know, I know. Sorry about that.
| TropicalAudio wrote:
| I'd say "medical knowledge" is too broad of a term to
| define a finite full spectrum in reasonable terms, as it
| effectively includes every possible interaction of each
| part of the human body with every type of physical or
| chemical condition. More reasonable would be to talk about
| "anatomical knowledge", which is finitely bound to
| understanding the expected structure/distribution, function
| of and communication between each part of the human body to
| a sub-cell level. We're most of the way there on the first
| facet, but our models of the latter two are still
| hilariously incomplete at this point.
| m463 wrote:
| I'm reminded of the scene in Mad Men where Roger says
| something to the effect of "I did everything they said for
| my ulcer, I drank the buttermilk. and now I have a
| coronary!"
|
| Also, in the book "The King of Hearts" which describes the
| history of open heart surgery, the first open heart
| surgeries were done by sewing the circulatory system of two
| people together (usually mother and child). that was in the
| recent past.
| christkv wrote:
| You might find the book The Butchering Art: Joseph
| Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian
| Medicine interesting. Crazy to think that the training to
| become a surgeon led to a lot of people dying from
| cutting into infected cadavers during training.
| et2o wrote:
| We have advanced incredibly far in both treatment of CAD
| and ulcers. And in CAD, still making tremendous
| improvements within the last ten years. You don't really
| know what you're talking about at all, citing a TV show.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| LOL they're making a point using the TV show quote as an
| analogy to the OP's sentiment, not commenting literally
| on CAD and ulcers.
| m463 wrote:
| Ha, the show was making a joke and it was relevant.
|
| The point I was making was that in our short lifetimes
| common medical practices have change directions 180
| degrees. The guy who drank h pylori was in our lifetime.
|
| I wonder what common problems and solutions we have today
| will be changed in the coming 30 years? Maybe there will
| be a cancer or fat pill and we can eat what we want.
| Maybe sugar will be banned. Maybe longevity might be
| conquered? Maybe covid-19 will be viewed like the black
| plague, which is well understood now.
| murgindrag wrote:
| I think you're being a little mean to the dark ages.
|
| Galen was a pretty accomplished medical researcher, and
| Roman-era medical implements were quite sophisticated, and
| were well-established by the time of the dark ages. By the
| late dark ages, we also saw a lot of modern medical
| techniques coming in from the Middle East.
|
| There's this stereotype of people being filthy, ignorant, and
| dumb, but it's not really true. And for many of the bad
| practices from then do persist in poorer parts of the world
| today affecting likely around a billion people (and some,
| like homeopathy, even in wealthy parts).
|
| Note that I'm not weighing in on the overall debate about
| where modern medicine is relative to the dark ages. We've
| made a lot of progress. I'm just refuting the stereotype of
| the dark ages.
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| > Galen was a pretty accomplished medical researcher, and
| Roman-era medical implements were quite sophisticated, and
| were well-established by the time of the dark ages.
|
| Were those implements actually practiced throughout the
| dark ages or did they go the way of the Roman road
| networks?
|
| When people talk of the dark ages they're usually talking
| of post-Roman Western Europe rather than Asia or the Middle
| East. I'm not sure if a Bohemian peasant living in 1000 AD
| would've benefited much from Islamic medicine advancements.
| murgindrag wrote:
| Wikipedia defines the Dark Ages as lasting through the
| 15th century, by which point, Islamic medical
| advancements would have made it into Europe. Obviously,
| in 500AD, they didn't yet exist.
|
| One of the reason for the decline of the term "dark ages"
| is that there is increasing evidence that people in this
| period didn't actually crawl under a rock of ignorance.
| Large-scale armies and infrastructure projects were gone,
| but at the same time, a lot more knowledge persisted than
| is given credit for -- the sorts of things which don't
| require a massive Roman central government administration
| to maintain.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Right, I used it as an all-embracing term for 'very old',
| I'm surprised many have taken the term so literally.
| Perhaps it's characteristic of HN's audience.
|
| _" One of the reason for the decline of the term "dark
| ages" is that there is increasing evidence that people in
| this period didn't actually crawl under a rock of
| ignorance."_
|
| Despite my use of 'Dark Ages', I cannot agree with you
| more. Perhaps you might like to look at this image of a
| shoulder-clasp from Britain's Sutton Hoo Hoard (it's one
| of many). Considering both its age and the time in which
| it was created (and the limited tool available then), to
| me, this is one of the most remarkable and beautiful
| objects I've ever seen. It sends shivers down my back
| when I think of the sheer talent that created it. We are
| so lucky it's survived essentially intact across the last
| one and half millennia:
|
| https://www.ancient.eu/image/5107/the-sutton-hoo-
| shoulder-cl...
|
| (Make sure you click on the image to get the largest
| view.)
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Yes, we've made some great leaps and they shouldn't be
| discounted, but neural-science is still in its infancy. We
| still don't know the exact mechanism of action of many
| commonly prescribed psychoactive medications. We know they
| work because, unlike in the past, we conduct rigorous
| studies, but we can only theorise as to why the work and why
| they don't have the same effect in all patients. This has
| real implications for how medicine is practiced, which will
| undoubtedly make our methods look quite primitive to future
| generations. For instance, physiatrists are still forced into
| a 'trial and error' approach when finding the correct
| antidepressant and dosage for each patient.
| ainiriand wrote:
| What still amazes me is the placebo effect. That is just
| pure mind-blowing-ness.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Mechanisms
| pas wrote:
| I think we know their mechanism of action, but the grim
| reality is that they don't work that well at low doses,
| plus there are a lot of side effects even at low doses.
| (Because their mechanism is so general. Inhibit this,
| promote that. But those are all over our body. Plus
| eventually there are tolerance issues - so doctors switch
| from time to time. But then they have to fiddle with the
| dose.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You would be quite wrong. We do know some bits about the
| effects of serotonin in the body, though I would be
| amazed if we really understood the whole story.
|
| But more than that, we have no idea what depression
| actually is, and that goes for any other psychiatric
| disease unrelated to direct brain damage. It would
| probably be more correct to call these syndromes rather
| than diseases, as we do not know the mechanisms causing
| the disease enough to even be sure if 'depression' is a
| meaningful diagnosis (in the sense that coughing is not a
| diagnosis).
|
| We also don't have proper neurological studies of
| emotional illnesses - there are basically no comparative
| neurological studies of people diagnosed with depression
| versus people showing similar symptoms who are expected
| to quickly recover (for example, people grieving for a
| lost one). We don't know whether the brain chemistry
| changes we see in depression are the cause of the
| disease, or just the way 'sadness'/'lack of motivation'
| looks like neuro-chemically.
| pas wrote:
| I think we're in agreement, but perhaps I wasn't precise
| enough in my phrasing.
|
| I mean we know what they do chemically, but as you said
| we have no idea what serotonin does. (Which is not true,
| but it's so complicated that what we know just makes us
| exhausted thinking about how truly complicated it is.)
|
| > We don't know whether the brain chemistry changes we
| see in depression are the cause of the disease, or just
| the way 'sadness'/'lack of motivation' looks like neuro-
| chemically.
|
| Indeed. Though it's always both. And probably asking
| whether we could, let's say take a pill every day as
| prevention seems unfathomable, because so far - again,
| just as you said - we don't really know what is
| depression. It's basically too much of feeling down.
| Feeling down when you shouldn't really be feeling that
| down, at least somehow "compared" to other people. So
| it's hard to know when prevention should start and when
| it's just normal case of the mondays.
|
| However, just as with the nurture-nature conundrum it
| seems natural to treat it as one thing very tightly
| coupled with the other. Which makes it likely that any
| kind of treatment and understanding has to always handle
| both in a lockstep. (Even if there are a lot of
| subgroups, some are more susceptible on the chemistry
| side, some more on the cognitive side, some are simply
| resilient enough to deal with it with some light touch
| counseling, some got a very bad ticket in life and need a
| whole support network to keep the darkness at bay, etc.)
| oceanplexian wrote:
| You don't have to look far in health policy to see the lunacy
| of modern medicine.
|
| Using nuclear radiation to "cure" cancer. Giving patients
| highly addictive narcotics for pain relief. Giving patients
| broad-spectrum antibiotics. And don't get me started on the
| insanity of current events, with mass over-use of
| disinfectants, conflicting and dubious public health
| guidelines (Covid 19 spreads 3M in Europe but only 6ft. in
| the USA, N95 masks don't prevent infection but surgical masks
| work great, viruses don't spread while sitting but spread
| while standing in a restaurant). Dark ages? No. But I can see
| the parallels.
| omanom wrote:
| How do you decide to attribute something to "modern
| medicine" versus "The Game of Telephone, Medical Style"?
|
| For example,
|
| >Giving patients highly addictive narcotics for pain
| relief.
|
| Is the opioid epidemic _modern medicine_ 's fault? Or is it
| more the fault of doctors who over-prescribe coupled with
| the lack of a sane healthcare system?
|
| Also, are there viable (read: equally effective)
| alternatives to opioids for pain relief?
|
| >Giving patients broad-spectrum antibiotics
|
| Is the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria _modern
| medicine_ 's fault? Or is it more the fault of patients who
| do not finish out their full regimen?
|
| And again, are there viable alternatives to broad-spectrum
| antibiotics?
|
| >Covid 19 spreads 3M in Europe but only 6ft. in the USA
|
| Distancing guidelines were meant to provide a general
| reference point, not magical thresholds at which COVID is
| incapable of passing over... They're going for a distance
| that is easily visualized, is situated well up on the
| "diminishing returns" curve, and (when combined with other
| measures like wearing a mask) provides an "acceptable" risk
| of exposure.
|
| Sneezing, for one example, will throw respiratory droplets
| much further than the recommendation for social distancing.
|
| >N95 masks don't prevent infection but surgical masks work
| great
|
| I'd like to see a source for this claim if you don't mind,
| as a quick perusal of the FDA[0] and CDC[1][2] do not show
| this statement anywhere. Everything I've found states
| they're fairly equally effective. Everything I've found
| also says that N95 and surgical masks are not recommended
| for use outside a profession which requires them:
|
| _Q: Should I purchase personal protective equipment such
| as facemasks or N95 respirators for me and my family?_
|
| _A: No. Surgical masks and N95s need to be reserved for
| use by health care workers, first responders, and other
| frontline workers whose jobs put them at much greater risk
| of acquiring COVID-19. The cloth face coverings recommended
| by CDC are not surgical masks or N95 respirators. Surgical
| masks and N95s are critical supplies that must continue to
| be reserved for health care workers and other medical first
| responders, as recommended by CDC._
|
| --
|
| _CDC does not recommend using masks for source control if
| they have an exhalation valve or vent._
|
| _Masks are not surgical masks or respirators. Currently,
| those are critical supplies that should continue to be
| reserved for healthcare workers and other medical first
| responders, as recommended by current CDC guidance. Masks
| also are not appropriate substitutes for them in workplaces
| where surgical masks or respirators are recommended or
| required and available._
|
| --
|
| CDC also links to a study[3] that found "Surgical and N95
| masks were __equally effective __in preventing the spread
| of PCR-detectable influenza ". There are plenty of related
| studies which come to the same conclusion.
|
| >viruses don't spread while sitting but spread while
| standing in a restaurant
|
| Again, how is this a "modern medicine" issue, or a
| "conflicting and dubious public health guideline"? They're
| not saying "the virus won't spread as long as you're
| sitting down!", they're saying "if you fucks _have_ to go
| out, at least _try_ to stay apart for everyone else 's
| sake".
|
| [0] https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-
| response/coro.... [1]
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-
| si... [2]
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-
| si... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19522650/
| mjburgess wrote:
| If by modern medicine you mean only "the best conclusions
| derived from the best meta-analyses based on the best
| evidence" then very little of what any doctor does is
| grounded in that.
|
| I wouldn't call that medicine. I'd call that, maybe,
| "research biomedical science".
|
| I think OP's comment is precisely that the practice of
| medicine has very little to do with what top-quality
| research would prescribe, and is more like medieval
| reasoning (like causes like, etc.).
|
| Of course the reason behind this is that we dont have
| much top-quality research; and what "research" we often
| have is poorly executed and ambiguous (if honest).
|
| What we "need" is 10k "disposable humans" manufactured
| on-demand, for 100k RCT experiments. What we have is
| often much closer to astrology.
| omanom wrote:
| Thank you for the more thorough take on that perspective.
|
| Yes, there are "parallels to the Dark Ages" in the sense
| that "medical practitioners prescribe treatment based on
| the best information available at the time".
|
| That doesn't mean medical knowledge, practice, research,
| and equipment has been stagnant or that medical
| practitioners should not be trusted with their advice.
|
| Statements like "the lunacy of modern medicine" are not
| truthful and not productive, _especially_ when the
| minimal supporting evidence for the statements are
| misleading at best.
| grishka wrote:
| For one thing, it feels like we're still very much not
| confident with anything at all because everything has to be
| tested in real humans, in real time, before it's considered a
| valid treatment (clinical trials). I understand _why_
| clinical trials are needed -- because otherwise we 'd still
| be using mysterious compounds and procedures without having a
| clue if they actually work -- but I believe that at some
| point we'd become so advanced with knowing how the human body
| works that we won't have to do that, and so could progress
| much, much faster, while knowing that our treatments work,
| and theoretically, instead of experimentally, proving that
| they should work.
| keithnoizu wrote:
| I'm of the same mind. The way in which new antibiotics are
| identified for example.
| [deleted]
| vixen99 wrote:
| On the other hand, just keeping to the observation, we can at
| least say that countless pathologists and others over a very
| long period have failed to identify this anatomical entity.
| In the main it seems that experts see what they expect to see
| and if it's not in the anatomy book then it doesn't exist.
| That's not necessarily perjorative. It's how we humans tend
| to be when observing the world (including ourselves) around
| us.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Oh dear, I should not have to labor the obvious but I will.
|
| With all the medical schools, hundreds of thousands of
| doctors, pathologists, diagnostic tools, xrays, MRIs, etc.
| etc. that we've had available in the 'modern' era of medicine
| - in the last 100 or so years - how the fucking hell did we
| miss something as 'obvious' as this? QED!
| snapetom wrote:
| You should have to because the original comment was seeping
| in dramatic hyperbole to fish for points. At the end of the
| day, I'd much rather live with modern medicine than dark
| age medicine.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I suggest you read my next post below.
|
| BTW, have you ever thought about the fact that cancer
| deaths are still very prevalent despite all the hyperbole
| from thousands of researchers say since 1950--yes,
| hyperbole deliberately spruced up to attract funding and
| to gain newspaper headlines.
|
| The facts are straightforward: had 0.1% of the promises
| about improvements in cancer treatments that have
| appeared in the many tens of thousands of professional
| research papers on the subject over the past 70 yeas had
| actually come to fruition, then the disease would have
| all but been eliminated by now.
|
| You might say this was justified but it's turned out that
| this type of hyperbole is not befitting of science, and
| that it's been largely responsible for the enormous drop
| in the public's approval rating for science over this
| time. _(I 'm not saying it's only cancer researchers
| (although they top the list), essentially it's all
| researchers these days.)
|
| Don't say this isn't true, do your research. In the 1950s
| almost everyone believed in and accepted science--even
| though this was the time of the A-Bomb and bomb
| development, back then, people could still differentiate
| science _per se* from the bad applications of science.
|
| Now, 60 or 70 years later, I know scientists who, when,
| say, they go to a party, will disguise their real
| professions, so bad is Science's PR. (I'm even in that
| league but I'm less sensitive about it than some.)
|
| Anyway, I'd suggest to you that in comparison with these
| professionals, my hyperbole pails into insignificance.
|
| Ha, so you reckon my hyperbole is dramatic and done only
| to fish for points. That implies you actually think about
| such matters and consider points important (most of my
| posts never make it even to two). Franky, these post
| would altogether be much better of without them. For the
| record, your assertion isn't true (not that I expect you
| to believe what I've said).
| et2o wrote:
| Because no one is looking for tissue that secretes saliva
| (not very interesting medically), coupled with the fact
| that this requires special PET/CT to find. You are a
| buffoon.
| mantap wrote:
| It's quite unnecessary to call people names, and also
| unwise, people might be tempted to mentally substitute
| the second person pronoun with a first person one.
| [deleted]
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Because no one is looking for tissue that secretes
| saliva (not very interesting medically), coupled with the
| fact that this requires special PET/CT to find. You are a
| buffoon."_
|
| et2o: yes--a buffoon--that's very likely true, but at
| least I admit it!
|
| However, you medicos have a damn lot to answer for. Where
| would you like me to start? Perhaps with the thalidomide
| fiasco, or more recently the abysmal lack of preparation
| for COVID-19 even though we knew it was coming decades
| ago, or the current opioid epidemic, the policies of
| which were sorted out nearly a century ago with both
| government regulation and tightly controlled
| international treaties, all of which have recently been
| [conveniently] forgotten by the pharmaceutical industry,
| the FDA, along with a disreputable mob of doctors who
| disbanded their Hippocratic Oaths for a few shekels from
| mafia-like Purdue. Right, the law should bring them all
| to account.
|
| Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the opioid crisis is
| that the thousands of 'good' doctors stood knowingly by
| and effectively did nothing, seemingly ethics flew out
| the window. In words loosely attributed to Edmund Burke:
| _" The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
| for good men to do nothing"._
|
| _" (not very interesting medically)"_
|
| Whilst many areas of medical science have done wonders,
| in others research has been almost non-existent. You're
| right, certain diseases/subjects are not interesting or
| boring and concomitantly that they fail to attract
| funding is a problem, and it's always been that way. In
| _this_ regard, the trouble is (and has always been) that
| the self-governing medical profession has never been able
| to prioritize patients above their own interests, not to
| mention money. In essence, medical researchers do not
| exercise granularity evenly over the field of medical
| knowledge (as you implied yourself); and that 's aided
| and abetted by large pharma, _et al_ whose principal
| interest is money, not medicine.
|
| ___
|
| _Lear: My wits begin to turn.
|
| Fool: He that has and a little tiny wit,--
|
| (Lear III/I)_
| rbanffy wrote:
| > medicine was Humorism, blood letting and faith healing.
|
| I suspect the doctors of the 23rd century will be similarly
| horrified by their 21st century counterparts practices.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Chemotherapy will definitely be on that list, as when you
| ultimately boil it down you are posioning someone _just_
| enough where the tumor dies before the rest of their body
| also dies.
| r721 wrote:
| NYT's title is a bit more cautious:
|
| >Doctors May Have Found Secretive New Organs in the Center of
| Your Head
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/health/saliva-glands-new-...
|
| >Dr. Alvand Hassankhani, a radiologist at the University of
| Pennsylvania, said he was hesitant to label the structures "new
| organs." In addition to the three pairs of known large salivary
| glands, some 1,000 minor salivary glands are sprinkled across the
| lining of the mouth and throat. They are more petite and tougher
| to find through imaging or scanning than their heftier cousins.
| It's possible that the Dutch researchers just happened upon a
| better way to image a set of underappreciated minor glands, Dr.
| Hassankhani said.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I don't think either title is very useful.
|
| "Doctors identify new salivary organ".... maybe? Then I
| wouldn't have to open their article and I can go on my merry
| way. Big ups for science, thumbs down for click bait.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| > Secretive Organ
|
| Good one.
| [deleted]
| pvaldes wrote:
| I'll propose to name it the Plumbus
| swyx wrote:
| Homunculus?
| xattt wrote:
| Source article:
| https://www.thegreenjournal.com/article/S0167-8140(20)30809-...
|
| The dumbed-down article seems to miss that inadvertent
| irradiation of the tubarial glands contributes to dry mouth in
| patients with cancer.
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