[HN Gopher] A backdoor lets the immune system monitor the brain
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       A backdoor lets the immune system monitor the brain
        
       Author : theafh
       Score  : 132 points
       Date   : 2021-04-28 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | Wassimo wrote:
       | Hopefully this will lead to better treatment of brain tumors and
       | other diseases.
        
       | doggodaddo78 wrote:
       | Brain region to immune system: _I am root._
       | 
       | Immune system: _Yes you are, my bad._
       | 
       | or _I 'm going to call bullshit on that. Put your arms up and
       | prepare for phagocytosis._
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | Now if only the immune system was open source and not some
         | binary blob we can only interfaced with by giving it fake
         | targets.
        
           | tux3 wrote:
           | The GPL makes this "binary" vs "source" distinction by
           | talking about the "preferred form for making changes". Well,
           | the binary blob of DNA happens to be also be the source!
           | 
           | Feel free to publish your genome under an open source license
           | =)
        
           | bronzeage wrote:
           | It is open source. You can go ahead and download the human
           | genome. You just can't run it because of a lack of efficient
           | simulation, and unlike human-created code the code is both
           | obfuscated and lacks clear separation of intents.
        
             | smegger001 wrote:
             | yeah its a code base millions of years old consisting of
             | spaghetti code with no comments written in a turring tarpit
             | of a language that compiles directly to hardware with
             | ridiculous compile times
        
               | bserge wrote:
               | Yeah, every time someone says I need to believe in God, I
               | tell them that I want to believe, if only to get there
               | and punch them in the face for creating such bullshit :D
        
       | grouphugs wrote:
       | headline: more harmful nazi technology
       | 
       | what a surprise, anyone notice a very strong and deliberate
       | pattern here?
        
       | Diggsey wrote:
       | I like that it is a literal "back door" in that there's an
       | opening in the barrier at the back of the brain.
        
       | steelframe wrote:
       | As somebody who has a somewhat strange form of Multiple Sclerosis
       | wherein almost all of the damage is in my so-called "water
       | channel" nerves located in my optic nerves and around my brain
       | stem, the observation that pathogens get "swept" into the area of
       | my CNS where most of my lesions occur is very interesting. I've
       | been tested multiple times for neuromyelitis optica, but that's
       | come back negative each time, so it's still officially diagnosed
       | as MS. It's just that my white matter has been completely
       | untouched for the 23 years I've had symptoms, which is really
       | unusual.
       | 
       | Interferon beta worked really well for me, and now Ocrelizumab is
       | doing even better.
       | 
       | I'm convinced that what we call "Multiple Sclerosis" today is
       | actually a collection of distinct conditions with largely
       | orthogonal causes, and just about the best we can do in absence
       | of a more thorough understanding of the issues is nuke all the
       | adolescent B-lymphocytes (which is what Ocrelizumab does).
        
         | rusty-rust wrote:
         | When last did you perform the tests for NMO? In the last decade
         | quite a few new tests have been developed.
         | 
         | There are two antibody tests you can perform to determine if
         | you have NMOSD; Anti-Mog and Aquaporin-4
        
         | faeyanpiraat wrote:
         | Do you happen to know an online MS community with folks similar
         | to the HN crowd?
        
           | treeman79 wrote:
           | Reddit and Facebook tend to have good communities.
        
         | therein wrote:
         | Here is an interesting fact for anyone who might be reading.
         | 
         | All the medications with the -mab suffix are monoclonal
         | antibodies.
         | 
         | For instance the "monoclonal antibody cocktail" Trump received
         | was casirivimab and imdevimab, made by Regeneron.
        
           | steelframe wrote:
           | Another fun fact: BioNTech, the company that co-developed the
           | mRNA COVID vaccine, applied similar techniques to develop an
           | experimental MS vaccine.
           | 
           | https://theweek.com/speedreads/960371/vaccine-maker-
           | biontech...
           | 
           | Of course if I could have a Bitcoin for every time
           | "autoimmune encephalomyelitis" has been cured in a mouse
           | model I would be set for life!
        
         | treeman79 wrote:
         | Ever been tested for Sjogrens? An autoimmune disorder that
         | attacks fluid producing systems.
        
       | wombatmobile wrote:
       | > The new findings help clarify one detail of Shirai's 1921 mouse
       | study that never sat well with the naive notion of immune
       | privilege. Shirai found that tumors survived and grew when
       | implanted in some locations in mice's brains. But when Shirai
       | placed tumors right next to the ventricles -- now known to be the
       | locations where the brain produces the fluid that sweeps antigens
       | off to the immune cells -- the tumors didn't survive.
       | 
       | So, the key experiment to reveal this fact was performed one
       | hundred years ago, but overlooked.
        
       | alanchen wrote:
       | Don't run unsafe code with root. That's common sense lol
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-28 23:00 UTC)