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A Billion Dollar Prize

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:26 pm
by MSimon

GREAT!

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:29 am
by zbarlici
A lot of people will be pissed off at pharma companies, if cure for diabetes or breast cancer is found within a relatively short time. A lot of ppl, including me.

This is freaking great. If nothing else, this approach will work. They should have left it at cure for cancer or diabetes as the auto industry is covered by the Automotive x-prize competition...

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:20 pm
by MSimon

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:39 pm
by dch24
So on the power and control blog, it quotes two articles about diabetes. Was the second article supposed to be about Multiple Sclerosis? Either way, I'm glad Cell put the scientists through the wringer and decided that their work had merit and said so in the editorial. Good news!

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 7:03 pm
by MSimon
dch24 wrote:So on the power and control blog, it quotes two articles about diabetes. Was the second article supposed to be about Multiple Sclerosis? Either way, I'm glad Cell put the scientists through the wringer and decided that their work had merit and said so in the editorial. Good news!
The people studying diabetes think there is a connection to MS. Or vice versa.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:03 pm
by scareduck
Diabetes is just plain weird. The conventional wisdom a few years ago was that it was an autoimmune disease, like heart disease and arthritis are now believed to be. But all that might be turned on its head, at least for Type 1 diabetes; Canadian researchers were recently able to cure diabetic mice by injecting their pancreases with capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers. They believe type 1 diabetes is caused by malfunctioning nerves in the pancreas. The same treatment also appears to be promising against Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes as well.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:13 pm
by JoeStrout
I wonder how they came up with those four goals. A cure for breast cancer (I assume they mean other than early detection and surgery, which is a pretty good cure for many women) makes some sense, as does the cure for diabetes. But goals 3 and 4, focussed on improving gasoline-powered cars, just seem backwards-looking to me. If your real goal is to reduce emissions, why not set a prize based on the car emissions and cost, without declaring ahead of time what energy-storage system it has to use?

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:14 am
by MSimon
Joe,

My mother (88) is a breast cancer survivor. Around 40 years.