Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it takes being a cancer researcher to know that an experimental treatment is riskier and could actually shorten your life. I get that some people need a lot of guidance/counseling to understand what the risks might be, but there are plenty of people capable of understanding the risks. Even for routine procedures people are rarely informed of the risks. Sure, they might get an Epic printout, but most skip or skim it and fhe doctor doesn't explain everything. Look at how many women are later surprised that the pill could increase their risk for breast cancer, gliomas, etc because it's colloquially known as being low risk with the benefit of not being pregnant. If you start reading off all the risks and truly getting people to conceptualize the probabilities, it would take too long and scare too many away.

If I'm terminal, hand me a packet and let me sign up for the experiment. If not, I might be buying/renting/borrowing some lab equipment, probably to an even bigger self risk (radioactive boy scout haha).

I read a post a while back by a guy who claimed to be managing a long term condition he had via homemade blood monitoring and pills containing something that earlier trials had shown were effective at managing the condition (I don't think it was diabetes, but it had a similar flavor to treating diabetes with something other than insulin.)

He explained that he eventually went blind in one eye because he had miscalculated the dose of something in his pill and eventually OD'd on it.

My reaction to the story was: "This is fantastic. More people should be doing this." (Obviously not the going blind part.)

What I do want is for it to be more widely recognized that we have in fact reached a point where it is possible for people to make their own blood tests, identify promising treatments in the scientific literature, and make their own medicine. I can't help but think that if that guy had been sharing his treatment with a like-minded community, someone else may have caught his dosing error.

Regarding treating diabetes with something other than insulin, it should be pointed out that there are several types of diabetes, and not all of them should be treated with insulin.

Type 2 diabetes for instance should be treated with fasting in most cases. It's not a popular treatment, probably because doctors tend to prefer to push pills down your throat, and also because fasting is scary, but it is way more effective than anything else out there.

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