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16-Year-Old Discovers Potential Treatment For Cystic Fibrosis
Bob the Super Hamste writes "According to a story at LiveScience, a 16-year-old Canadian 11th grade student has discovered a possible treatment for cystic fibrosis. The treatment is a combination of two drugs which, in a computer simulation on the Canadian SCINET supercomputing network, did not interfere with each other while interacting with the defective protein responsible for the disorder. He has also tested the drug combination on living cells with results that 'exceeded his expectations.'"
Maybe, but not necessarily. CF isn't a huge profit center like heart disease medications or even HIV. Even though CF is the most common chronic genetic condition in the US, the numbers just aren't there. Most of the major CF meds (Pulmozyme, Creon, Tobi, Cayston, etc) is given away by the pharmas when the patient can't afford. While it may not be true for other conditions, when it comes to CF the pharmas ensure that those who need their meds get them. The emphasis for profit in CF just isn't there.
I should know - I have Cystic Fibrosis, and despite periods of no insurance, I've never done without. (Yes, I'm in the United States.)
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
While we did not have drug trials at school, just outside our school there was a little park where you could sometimes find syringes from whatever drug research activities were going on overnight.
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I'm sure the kid, who was working in a lab that has been doing CF research for quite a while, is well aware that he probably just recreated experiments done before.
If it was discussed a few months ago in a general journal (I'm not sure, but let's assume the parent is correct), it's more likely this was known several months ago in the specialized academic journals that the lab professor would read. So it's far more likely that he is an ambitious student who found a professor to tell him what to do so he could gain experience, not the inventor or discoverer of a cure.
It's not shitting on him to say he didn't put this together on his own. It's just the truth.
Why does everyone need to be called a genius in order to feel special enough to work hard in an industry? Have you done research before in a lab? If you had, you'd know that while the GP might be crass, it's exactly the most likely scenario.