You’re the person I wanted to hear from as soon as I saw the press conference. Hard to listen to Ellison talk about future scientific oncology discoveries when he’s neither an oncologist nor a researcher.
I prefer to get my medical information from Bill gates.
These guys are just hawking biotech pump and dump schemes. The fact they think they understand biotech with not even basic training or experience is laughable.
As soon as I saw this clip my mind went to, “This sounds wrong on so many levels; I can’t wait to hear what Vinay says.” As someone who works in the medical field but isn’t an MD or a researcher, I’m wondering: In order for AI to really make huge headways in medicine, don’t we need a ton of good RCT’s? I assume good AI results would come from good data. So all your encouragement to perform tightly controlled studies seems even more urgent.
Yep, garbage in, garage out. I'm a data scientist and you'd be surprised to know how many of my peers think you can solve all kinds of problems simply by having a mountain of data, without questioning how that data relates to the underlying real processes that generate it. If there's a ton of noise in the data generating process or it is far removed from the systems you want to understand or improve, you're SOL. You can spend heaps of money and resources to create only confusion.
This is pretty disheartening. Even as a psych undergrad we had the importance of validity, reliability and the importance of research design hammered into our brains. When did people decide that anything called research is just hunky dory?
Unfortunately in tech most of the attention is given to sexy new tools, and much less attention is given to boring old fundamentals like statistical validity. Incidentally stats is harder too and requires more critical thinking than just hammering a problem with compute power. You can get through a CS degree and become a "data scientist" with only the barest minimum of statistics fundamentals. I studied math and got a solid dose of stats with it, so I was relatively better off in that way, but not everyone comes to data science or ML via that route. Now you have the leading "AI" labs doing "benchmarks" on data that was probably in their training sets.
I cringe every time I hear about a cure for cancer as though "cancer" is one disease. People don't understand that there is a hugely wide variety of things labeled "cancer" by the pathologists. There are even certain diseases that are controversial as to whether they should be called cancer or not. There can be no "cure for cancer" because "cancer" is not a singular disease.
That’s why I subscribe. I’m interested in objective truth. And although I lean hard to one side of the political spectrum (just come on over already Dr Prasad!😉), I just want facts (AND common sense-masks don’t work on 2y/o’s) when it comes to medicine and healthcare.
The truth is what matters most. I have heard a lot of hype and propaganda in my 36 years in medicine. Very little of what the medical futurists predict comes to pass. Occasionally, though, we do get a big success.
Yet people make billions on the hype and speculation. Venture capital, C suite execs etc etc, their big pharma payouts amount to stealing from the sick. Why do you think those in the know didn't expose Theranos and Holmes, cause everyone else wants to get in on it too.
Ellison and company are blind to the limitations of generative AI in health. This whole area would be worth a long piece here or Sensible Medicine, perhaps...we can discuss if you like. The foundational premise of good health care is the individualization of such care...as I tell each of my patients "you are your own science experiment". As DARPA notes, Wave 2 AI (all generative AI) is "statistically impressive but individually unreliable". All generative AI requires training and probabilistic traverse of the training sets with the query at hand. But training sets have two issues: At some point (perhaps 85%) systems become overtrained and start to deliver wrong answers. Even worse, there will NEVER be a training set for Vinay or any other individual. These two elements, together with the probabilistic nature of the entire technology ensure that hallucinations are guaranteed -- and in health care, they will kill you.
I, too, think there are things that AI can do. But they are NOT making your EMR better -- they will just interpose hallucinations that will likely make it worse and it will be up to YOU the clinician (where the liability still remains) to sort out the truth -- which is often HARDER to do post AI than without AI. This entire area needs far more serious individual-centric contemplation and far less hype.
So yes, mRNA and AI will not, either together or separately, solve the cancer problem. And they may make it worse by overpromising and inserting new, untested areas of failure.
Also, if we zoom out and stop looking at cancerS as an illness, and rather look at cancerS in its bigger context, nearly all cancer occur past the age of menopause, most cancers are not "illness" they are simply death.
The Medical Industrial Complex rarely extends life, mostly the MIC extends death.
Thank you once again for your informed and invaluable perspective on medicine and health. I don't always agree, but I never fail to learn something new from you. You are one of the docs/scientists online who make science fun again.
They continue to push this snake oil. Big Pharma is in control of the entire political agenda in the USA. There are good ways of getting rid of many/most cancers that are extremely safe, but they will never see the light of day because they are not profitable. Same with type 2 diabetes. Just so profitable to “treat” people.
The Cancer Industrial Complex is though, the worst. All oncologist work for one of a few huge companies. They all treat according to a computer program from the CDC. It’s all designed to push drugs that make huge profits. I have heard $300,000 per patient. You are never going to fix this industry.
When is the last time a president lead a press conference to announce a multiple-party science/tech joint venture?? I've seen no mention of taxpayers dollars being thrown in the pot...have others? Stepping back now, this is very, very odd.
Your truth is what I’m here for. I don’t expect perfect prescience or judgment.
You’re the person I wanted to hear from as soon as I saw the press conference. Hard to listen to Ellison talk about future scientific oncology discoveries when he’s neither an oncologist nor a researcher.
I prefer to get my medical information from Bill gates.
These guys are just hawking biotech pump and dump schemes. The fact they think they understand biotech with not even basic training or experience is laughable.
As soon as I saw this clip my mind went to, “This sounds wrong on so many levels; I can’t wait to hear what Vinay says.” As someone who works in the medical field but isn’t an MD or a researcher, I’m wondering: In order for AI to really make huge headways in medicine, don’t we need a ton of good RCT’s? I assume good AI results would come from good data. So all your encouragement to perform tightly controlled studies seems even more urgent.
Yep, garbage in, garage out. I'm a data scientist and you'd be surprised to know how many of my peers think you can solve all kinds of problems simply by having a mountain of data, without questioning how that data relates to the underlying real processes that generate it. If there's a ton of noise in the data generating process or it is far removed from the systems you want to understand or improve, you're SOL. You can spend heaps of money and resources to create only confusion.
This is pretty disheartening. Even as a psych undergrad we had the importance of validity, reliability and the importance of research design hammered into our brains. When did people decide that anything called research is just hunky dory?
Unfortunately in tech most of the attention is given to sexy new tools, and much less attention is given to boring old fundamentals like statistical validity. Incidentally stats is harder too and requires more critical thinking than just hammering a problem with compute power. You can get through a CS degree and become a "data scientist" with only the barest minimum of statistics fundamentals. I studied math and got a solid dose of stats with it, so I was relatively better off in that way, but not everyone comes to data science or ML via that route. Now you have the leading "AI" labs doing "benchmarks" on data that was probably in their training sets.
I cringe every time I hear about a cure for cancer as though "cancer" is one disease. People don't understand that there is a hugely wide variety of things labeled "cancer" by the pathologists. There are even certain diseases that are controversial as to whether they should be called cancer or not. There can be no "cure for cancer" because "cancer" is not a singular disease.
That’s why I subscribe. I’m interested in objective truth. And although I lean hard to one side of the political spectrum (just come on over already Dr Prasad!😉), I just want facts (AND common sense-masks don’t work on 2y/o’s) when it comes to medicine and healthcare.
For some reason I kept thinking of snake oil salesmen promoting their wares on the street corner…
I hope you posted your article on X. I saw the news conference I thought no way this has snake oil big money vibes all over it. Where is RFK????
Where's the researchers/oncologists?
The truth is what matters most. I have heard a lot of hype and propaganda in my 36 years in medicine. Very little of what the medical futurists predict comes to pass. Occasionally, though, we do get a big success.
Yet people make billions on the hype and speculation. Venture capital, C suite execs etc etc, their big pharma payouts amount to stealing from the sick. Why do you think those in the know didn't expose Theranos and Holmes, cause everyone else wants to get in on it too.
Vinay,
Ellison and company are blind to the limitations of generative AI in health. This whole area would be worth a long piece here or Sensible Medicine, perhaps...we can discuss if you like. The foundational premise of good health care is the individualization of such care...as I tell each of my patients "you are your own science experiment". As DARPA notes, Wave 2 AI (all generative AI) is "statistically impressive but individually unreliable". All generative AI requires training and probabilistic traverse of the training sets with the query at hand. But training sets have two issues: At some point (perhaps 85%) systems become overtrained and start to deliver wrong answers. Even worse, there will NEVER be a training set for Vinay or any other individual. These two elements, together with the probabilistic nature of the entire technology ensure that hallucinations are guaranteed -- and in health care, they will kill you.
I, too, think there are things that AI can do. But they are NOT making your EMR better -- they will just interpose hallucinations that will likely make it worse and it will be up to YOU the clinician (where the liability still remains) to sort out the truth -- which is often HARDER to do post AI than without AI. This entire area needs far more serious individual-centric contemplation and far less hype.
So yes, mRNA and AI will not, either together or separately, solve the cancer problem. And they may make it worse by overpromising and inserting new, untested areas of failure.
Also, if we zoom out and stop looking at cancerS as an illness, and rather look at cancerS in its bigger context, nearly all cancer occur past the age of menopause, most cancers are not "illness" they are simply death.
The Medical Industrial Complex rarely extends life, mostly the MIC extends death.
Thank you once again for your informed and invaluable perspective on medicine and health. I don't always agree, but I never fail to learn something new from you. You are one of the docs/scientists online who make science fun again.
Again I’d like to clink wine glasses with you, Dr. Prasad. Here’s to the truth and some common sense. Cheers 🍷⚖️
Is turbo-cancer related to RNA COVID vaccine a complete hysterical concept or is it a thing worth examining ???
They continue to push this snake oil. Big Pharma is in control of the entire political agenda in the USA. There are good ways of getting rid of many/most cancers that are extremely safe, but they will never see the light of day because they are not profitable. Same with type 2 diabetes. Just so profitable to “treat” people.
The Cancer Industrial Complex is though, the worst. All oncologist work for one of a few huge companies. They all treat according to a computer program from the CDC. It’s all designed to push drugs that make huge profits. I have heard $300,000 per patient. You are never going to fix this industry.
So you're suggestion Vinay works for a huge 'company' and treats according to this 'computer program'?
I dont know what Dr. Vinay does, but I do know this is what just about every oncologist in the USA does because I saw it firsthand.
He’s an oncologist
When is the last time a president lead a press conference to announce a multiple-party science/tech joint venture?? I've seen no mention of taxpayers dollars being thrown in the pot...have others? Stepping back now, this is very, very odd.
Makes a good story for investors though.
If only we could get these miracle drug discovery skammers to wait till they come up with something of value before making any press releases.