The benefits may seem small, but they can make a world of difference, patients say.
  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Just because no one knows how it works doesn’t mean you can’t perfect it’s use with trial and error.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      True, but the difference is like trying to throw a dart at a bullseye with your eyes closed, vs a bench top rifle and a 10x scope. An exact understanding of why could much more quickly lead to hitting that bullseye and making it work 10 fold faster and better. Aspirin started off as people chewing on tree bark and getting stomach pain as a side effect of removing another pain. We figured out how and why it worked, removed wood chewing, removed the stomach pain, and were then also able to develope other pain killers based on how it worked, like ibuprofen, naproxen, and other nsaids.

      • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        There’s no real reason you can’t develop both simultaneously. I’m not discounting the need to find a root cause. Of course it would have substantial benefits as you describe. However, sometimes it’s better to make marginal improvements to be able to better help people right now than to wait 20 years until we understand the why’s. Medical breakthrough can take quite a while sometimes (sometimes never).

  • celeste@kbin.earth
    0·
    6 months ago

    I had the idea that electricity had been tried for paralysis, and I looked it up and ben franklin did experiments to try and cure it with shocks.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16717219/

    I wonder if the difference was targeting? The type of paralysis? The podcast Sawbones did an episode on the history of electricity in medicine that was pretty interesting. I might relisten.