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A comment on Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials. Parent comment

Re:Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia mov... by emiliobumachar on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:14AM (#18724593)
Many treatments of severe conditions do substantial harm, which is considered acceptable for the benefits.

Extreme examples are chemotherapy, i.e. giving poison to cancer patients, and radiotherapy, i.e. irradiating them. The healthy cells can take it, the cancer cells not so much. Statistically.

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Re:Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia mov... by JamesBarney on Thursday December 20, 2018 @02:17PM (#18728077)
Yeah but this isn't chemotherapy, and with chemotherapy you are literally trying to kill cells.
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Re:Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia mov... by emiliobumachar on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:02PM (#18730678)
A distinction without a difference. What I meant was: it may be worth it to cause some neural damage to defuse whatever mechanism causes a disease that, when unstopped, causes more neural damage. Hence "kick the TV" technologies are not out of consideration.

Obviously, very big ethical issues arise when experimenting on people, but that's nothing new. Someone took radiotherapy first, before anyone was sure it was worth it to the individual.

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