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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @12:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the end-of-an-epidemic dept.

Bill Gates gave an address at J.P. Morgan's 36th Annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco:

[There] is reason to hope that the insights uncovered in ongoing immunotherapy research for cancer will eventually help us control all infectious diseases. This would be a huge victory for humanity—and potentially a significant market for the life sciences.

Others seem to think so too. Venture capitalists like Bob Nelsen and Bob More have helped raise over $500 million for VIR Biotechnology—including funding from us—to discover and develop treatments for serious infectious diseases.

We are also investors in Immunocore, which is using T-cell technology to help stimulate the body's immune system. Initially, Immunocore's "T-cell receptor" technology targeted cancers, but it could also be applied against infectious diseases.

We are backing companies like CureVac and Moderna on mRNA approaches for vaccine and drug development, which have the potential to help us tackle cancer. This approach is also intriguing as a potential immunological intervention for HIV, malaria, flu and the Zika virus.

And mRNA vaccines are likely to be cheaper, easier, and faster to make than traditional vaccines. This would be particularly helpful in containing epidemics—whether they occur through nature or are the result of an intentional biological attack. Today, it typically takes up to 10 years to develop and license a new vaccine. To significantly curb deaths from a fast-moving airborne pathogen, we would have to get that down considerably—to 90 days or less.

Also at NBF.

Related: Bill Gates Commits $100 Million to Alzheimer's Research


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  • (Score: 1) by RedIsNotGreen on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:19AM (1 child)

    by RedIsNotGreen (2191) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:19AM (#621732) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately, Whole Foods has grown too large to sustain its ideals, and is now serving up slightly better versions of the same slops as all the others. If you don't believe me, print out a list of their "unacceptable ingredients" [wholefoodsmarket.com] and then go to a store and see how often you can find them in products on sale. Along with all the processed food Whole Foods sells, their slogan of "America's healthiest grocery store" becomes quite the hilarious joke.
  • (Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:28PM

    by pdfernhout (5984) on Saturday January 13 2018, @03:28PM (#621821) Homepage

    That sadly may be true -- and in the book the CEO addresses the question of why Whole Foods (the store) sells stuff he would not eat (essentially, selling some of what customers want).

    But, "Whole Foods" is a more general term that just means "whole foods". It's confusing of course there is a store chain with that name -- although it makes sense given the origin of the store in marketing buzz around selling "whole foods".

    You can buy whole foods at any regular grocery store. These are foods which are minimally processed, with nothing added, and nothing taken away. So, for example, lettuce, carrots, pears, onions, beans, whole grains where you can see the grain, wild-caught fish fillets and pasture-raised grass-fed beef steaks (although they suggest minimizing animal products to less than 10% of calories) and so on. Whole foods are mostly stuff that generally does not have a label and is typically around the perimeter of a grocery store.

    Whole foods eaters would avoid highly processed foods like those with added sugar, white flour, oils, stuff with long lists of chemical additives, processed meats like salami, and so on. The authors of that book are not OK with oils because oils have so many calories in little volume, have very little nutrients, have a poor omega-3-to-omega-6 ratio, and can go rancid -- and of course, oils are processed.

    Food processing is on a continuum though, so "whole foods" often is not a black-and-white choice. For example, in the book, they give an OK to whole wheat pasta, which is somewhere between visible grains and white flour. But whole wheat flour is still probably not as good for you as visible grains -- but on a practical basis it is better than eating a lot of other junk. They even give a pass to white rice for similar reasons -- somewhat processed, but still better than other things. I bought some locally made salsa the other day where I can see the chunks of tomatoes, and even though it has an ingredients list and comes in refrigerated plastic container, I think it would be low on the processing list.

    They also quote a study that says something like if half the US population ate a lot more conventional (not organic) vegetables there would be 20,000 less cancers a year from the extra phytonutrients and fiber in vegetables but only 10 more cancers a year from the pesticides. Of course, pesticides can also affect the brain too (since most pesticides were derived from neurotoxins) -- but I'd expect the vegetable benefit to brain health would likewise still vastly outweigh the risks there too. I'm still going to buy organic for various reasons when I can, but it is a great point. Also, some "organic" pesticides are not that healthy for you either. The body has some limited ability to deal with toxins -- they key is not to overwhelm it.

    --
    The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.