356 karma · joined April 13, 2024
The argument also goes that some cancers may never become clinically relevant, or in the case of the sick, vulnerable or elderly other causes of death will get you before the cancer does - And so detection in these cases may cause “unnecessary” treatment, patient worry and burden on society.
The biggest push-back from the medical profession is diagnosing cancers that are not clinically relevant and treatable (eg. A cancer may be detected 15 years before clinically relevant in some cases to my understanding). There is also a cost benefit dynamic of increasing preventative screening, for example lowering the prescribed age for breast screening would save lives but may carry costs for nations or corporations that are unacceptable.
Detection is being solved in some incredible ways. To my understanding moonshot catch all treatments are mostly a pipe dream given the diversity of disease under the “cancer” umbrella, and lifestyle based prevention is proving a way bigger factor than historically acknowledged - an inconvenient challenge in addressing the issue societally.
It is an endlessly interesting field to keep a track of, and I believe more entrepreneurs should be working on prevention topics!
Amazing that they’re still in there somewhere.
One dynamic I was shocked to hear was the prevalence of marriages where one partner (always the husband in this context) is HIV positive and the other is secretly on prep. In this context infidelity may be a norm and traditional cultural and gender norms may look negatively or skeptically at anti-retrovirals.
While this isn’t the majority of the HIV experience in South Africa, it’s certainly a sizable group.
Further, adherence more generally is a massive problem. The cost of travel to a clinic in both rural and urban settings can be prohibitive for many and cause major adherence drop-off.
Drugs like this, if made affordable, will go a long way to immediately easing pressure on these groups - and that’s exciting.
If they’re speaking about LLM’s - well then this is just plain dumb.
In the recently released book Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby by Rassie Erasmus (two time World Cup winning South African rugby coach), Rassie mentions that he doesn’t do one-on-ones. To quote from the book:
"Everything was done in front of everybody. I’ve never had a one-on-one with a player, except when he came to me with a deeply personal issue. I told them not to come to me individually with questions about why they were not in the team, or why they thought they deserved an opportunity…
Some of the newer players weren’t used to me not having one-on-one discussions. I told them I preferred to talk to everyone together so everyone understood what was going on, and no rumours started about what might have happened between me and a player behind closed doors."
Given how often sports team analogies are used in leadership speak, perhaps this fits.
Often when someone’s arguments are valid and convincing, but their entire vocabulary seems confined to an issue, asking yourself a couple “whatabouts” may help you see biases inherent in the topic bias.
He did this because he was struggling with personal debt and his new wife had expensive taste.
Feels like there should be a lesson in there somewhere.
The toll is also much worse in developing nations where the demand in the job market is low. Business failure then could mean people being long-term or permanently out of work.
Entrepreneurship is a massive driver of employment in developed markets (especially VC backed). Ironically, entrepreneurs in developing markets may be dissuaded from employing so not to carry this risk.
People who have employees and haven’t yet gone out of business are likely to have a good product and business model. Having a good business model is likely to make you wealthier than not having yet found a good business model.
“We interviewed a 100 bananas and found that the ripe ones were yellow”