I mean the actual medicine part. When I think about it, there are still no cures for the major things that ail us (e.g. cancer, etc.). China cured that one guy from his diabetes, but I haven't heard anything beyond that.

The "promise" of stem cell technology from 20 years ago still hasn't amounted to anything that your average person can get (and there are all sorts of shady overseas places that give ppl "stem cell" injections, but honestly we should have figured out that shit by now).

If you tear a ligament/tendon, guess what, that shit will never heal back to 100%, and the "oh just rest and do physical therapy" shit is annoying because you're only really working around the problem and not solving it.

On top of that, as you get older it's harder for your body to heal from injuries, sickness, etc. and I've yet to see any legit progress on anti-aging. If your heart is damaged or arteries clogged, I don't see any way to reverse it.

And after covid, it's all been fucked. How many people have long covid and the medical establishment just throws it's hands up shrug-outta-hecks basically treating an entire segment of the population as though it was a bad crop yield ("I guess there's always the next batch!!).

And doctors themselves are often the biggest dipshits out there. They are high off their own supply because they're "smart" and lack the empathy to actually listen to patients. Either they're older conservative types or younger lib dipshits. And there are so many horror stories about nurses that talk shit about patients. It's just dismal.

The common reply is that "biology is hard" but honestly that's a WEAK excuse. So many advances were made in the past, and there are so many more to be made. An actual concerted international effort, unhindered by profit motives and fucking insurance, hospital, pharmaceutical industries, etc. would almost certainly yield results. I mean look at Cuba coming up with a lung cancer vaccine and curing HIV in an infant. Look at China curing diabetes in that one guy. These advances are possible, but honestly they aren't coming fast enough. If you're suffering from a terrible disease/ailment, the "promise" of a new drug that still may be 10 years away is just terrible.

So even if we had 100% socialism now with free healthcare, there are still so many things that need to be addressed. I can't help but think that had the Soviet Union not fallen, we would have had cures for many things. Hopefully xi-beard can do something about this, but overall I'm still super bummed that the future we dreamed has not materialized.

  • electricaltape [none/use name]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I don't know, I kinda agree with OP. Every time something seems impossible there's always a breakthrough. Why should we believe it would be any different for this?

    • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Medical research stands on the shoulders of giants. Do you think these breakthroughs just happen randomly or when it's convenient? People pour their lives into advancing a small amount of our shared knowledge, and will never see recognition or thanks.

      I am so confused by what is getting upvoted here, you people have no experience in medicine or research.

      No investigation, no right to speak.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I am so confused by what is getting upvoted here, you people have no experience in medicine or research.

        It's just a bunch of people angry at the world upvoting what they would like to hear over the truth of the matter/situation. Seems to be an ever increasing theme on hexbear, I think people want to even ban "doomerism" now, whatever that means.

        • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
          ·
          3 months ago

          There's definitely been a trend of growing sentiment against any sort of authority under capitalism combined with general anti-intellectualism here. The threads full of people screaming that 9/11 was an inside job because jet fuel can't melt steel beams was absurd, no matter how many people wander in pointing out that's not how that works and that, yes, you should generally trust structural engineers even if they exist within the framework of capitalism, or threads like this full of people saying that (the very real) systemic racism within healthcare means that doctors have no clue what they're talking about in any context and that you should just self medicate instead.

          • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            There was a COVID thread today, that in the end came down to people commenting every single COVID origin conspiracy, instead of just accepting that maybe COVID came from an animal source in China, which is the currently most supported consensus by the scientific community. The general anti intellectualism, combined with a denial of reality when it doesn't conform to the ideal people want it to conform to, is starting to get annoying. It wasn't always like this on here.

            • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
              ·
              3 months ago

              I vaguely believe it came from Ft Detrick but also it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the source it should’ve been dealt with differently and now it’s here and we have to deal with it.

              • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                It absolutely does matter. Repeating decades old conspiracy theories and misinformation about Fort Detrick creating diseases like HIV COVID causes mistrust in science, and denial of the effects of said diseases. People who believe in such conspiracies are less likely to take the disease seriously. If parts of the left are going to get duped by Operation Denver again, I'd like to skip the part where it causes denialism that affects official government policy and kills hundreds of thousands of people.

                Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific underpinnings of the H.I.V. and aids epidemic, citing the Fort Detrick conspiracy, among other discredited theses. As a result, South Africa delayed wide-scale implementation of antiretroviral therapies, at the cost of as many as three hundred and thirty thousand lives.

            • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
              ·
              3 months ago

              It's got strong Lysenko vibes for sure. Some people are so busy shitting on Amerikkka (good and based) that they start deciding that mRNA vaccines are actually inferior (bad and cringe).

              • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                The weirdest thing I've seen on this website lately is when people take a flaw or poor pattern of behaviour that is universal to the human condition, and proceed to blame the West/America for it or act said poor behaviour only happens there. As one of the most outspoken people on here encouraging others to read third worldist theory, even I don't know where this is coming from. Universalism is probably one of the more important parts of leftism and even third world ideology, Samir Amin's Eurocentrism dedicates an entire chapter to addressing universalism.

            • AmericaDelendaEst [comrade/them]
              ·
              3 months ago

              i don't care what a "scientific community" says, it probably came from ft detrick. Too many coincidences leading up to the "outbreak" in Wuhan but idk I'm not a coincidence theorist

              • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                The whole Fort Detrick conspiracy is just rehashing Operation Denver, but for COVID instead of HIV. It's not even a new conspiracy. There is no need for the left to get duped again by the exact same conspiracy many leftists fell for over three decades ago.

        • whogivesashit@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          3 months ago

          Medicine is hard, I don't think anyone said it isn't. What they said is that it's a bad excuse.

          The point is that there's a lot more factors that go into what gets researched and what treatments are readily available for the public etc.

          When people say "holy shit how have we not made more progress on some of these things", replying with "it's hard" is a weak ass excuse when we have pharma companies pouring toms of money into making analogs of drugs so they don't lose their patents.

          • hypercracker
            ·
            3 months ago

            All the things OP is complaining about are basically diseases of the first world. They affect billionaires too and actually get a fair bit of funding (especially aging research). Most of the world does not even live long enough due to mundane curable public health issues to worry about cancer.

        • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]
          ·
          3 months ago

          I feel pretty vindicated cause it turns out 3 accounts in this thread were sock puppets, check the modloog.

      • bidenicecream
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Medical research stands on the shoulders of giants. Do you think these breakthroughs just happen randomly or when it's convenient?

        Yes, they do stand on the shoulders of giants. AND, the breakthroughs often, perhaps usually, overturn the current "consensus" of the day, and often those breakthroughs are mocked by the current establishment consensus (there are plenty of examples on this, e.g. doctors legit thought that washing your hands before surgery didn't matter, physicists used to believe in the eternal/steady state model of the universe, physicists thought that physics was basically "done" and then the quantum revolution happened). So I don't know what you're talking about.

        No investigation, no right to speak.

        This might actually be you, but who am I to say shrug-outta-hecks .

        • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]
          ·
          3 months ago

          This might actually be you, but who am I to say

          I have a doctorate in a medical field

          • bidenicecream
            hexagon
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Yeah so do I. I also speak from experience, I don't share your opinion.

              • bidenicecream
                hexagon
                ·
                3 months ago

                Just based on your lack of citation

                Great a typical nerd stemlord response. No wonder the field is going to shit. This is some grade A neoliberal reddit-logo shit. If you want citations, I can give them to you, but I'm too tired to deal with this fucking shit, especially from a fellow hexbear. Good look to you comrade.

                • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 months ago

                  TIL scientific citations are neoliberalism

                  I do agree with your critique of capitalists controlling our medicine , but yeah let's disengage