Medical science is about the only thing in modern life that consistently delivers hope. While all the other terrible things are going on, something like this comes along and I’m just extremely happy to be alive right now.
Funny because I feel the opposite. Health care is so broken with all the politics, insurance, bureaucracy, financialization, etc that the vast majority of people are not able to reap the rewards of progress. Even the science is perverted because of bad incentives and only potentially lucrative research is funded.
I was about to say we pay for all this super modern progress by making healthcare so expensive it's out of reach of the vast majority of people in the world (and in the US).
It couldn't exist otherwise. The privileged will always be the ones to push the boundaries of any endeavor, medicine included. Have hope that those rewards continue to work their way down, even though the process is long and arduous.
That's just a failure of imagination, no? Endless sci-fi stories tell us a better world is possible, including wild genetic treatments curing deafness. Why should that apply to tech, but not society?
Astronomy is cool too, nothing anchors you back in reality like realizing how absolutely microscopic and insignificant our entire mankind's existence was and is.
Solid perspective and understanding of bigger picture is important, then nothing can surprise you much.
Personally, I find astronomy quite depressing. Learning that humanity is stuck on this rock; at least for my lifetime if not forever. As a kid I dreamed of exploring space. As an adult I learned that is impossible.
I think this is why the skyrocketing costs of healthcare in the US are so upsetting to me. Its sucking away the hope by putting so many of these technological miracles out of reach.
The high Healthcare costs in the US are caused mostly by high physician salaries though, and that's probably highly correlated with why they are able to make all these breakthroughs
Last I checked, physician pay represents a fairly small (single digit) fraction of healthcare expenditure. If I recall right, administrative overhead and insurance is significantly more of a contributor to pricing.
Do you have a source for that? Physician salaries do not account for all that large of a portion of healthcare spending. A $300,000/year doc performs a lot of procedures annually, and the amortized amount isn't huge compared to other costs.
What's the end goal of this remark? What's the end goal of learning to farm and produce food even when the weather and pest gods don't bless you this year? What's the end goal of learning to heat your hut instead of dying every winter?
Because it will utterly end all societal development.
Imagine if fucking Ghengis Khan never had to die.
Or Henry Kissinger.
Or Carnegie
Our system is struggling under the immense weight of old leaders and the best they can do is pump themselves full of weird drug cocktails to have some semblance of being alive. Imagine removing the last roadblock to eternal life for the richest human alive.
People would develop in different ways if they could live to be 1000. It would hardly end societal development. I imagine education would be a bigger deal, since you'd be in less of a hurry to get on with life at 18. Families would be larger as more generations were included, which could create more nurturing and supportive environments for at-risk children. You'd also have fewer trust fund babies living off of the inheritance from a dead relative. And the sheer amount of brainpower and life experience we lose every time a 90 year old dies is depressing; science, technology, and literature could all benefit from people living longer.
What is the purpose of this question? "Yeah sure, we're fixing people's problems that cause pain, suffering, loss of productivity, death, etc, but what is the ultimate goal?"
???? I would imagine the average surgeon is much happier with their compensation than the average DoorDasher. It's a reliable fixed-rate salary vs wondering if you'll get enough $3 tips to make rent this month.
Yes. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don't think doctors are overpaid. The amount of time and effort they invest in undergrad, sometimes additional college after that, medical school, residency, and sometimes a fellowship is more than I've ever been willing to put into my career.
I can assure you that regeneron pays very well, including significant equity and has absolutely fantastic benefits. Software developers probably get more at door dash (it isn't bad by any means, but they aren't "the talent" at regeneron after all), but folks involved in the science and trials are doing very well.
