[HN Gopher] Bispecific antibodies potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2...
___________________________________________________________________
Bispecific antibodies potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants of
concern
Author : ohjeez
Score : 360 points
Date : 2025-03-10 00:46 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| tomrod wrote:
| Sign me up!
| mkoryak wrote:
| What does this mean? A better vaccine?
| blooalien wrote:
| > What does this mean? A better vaccine?
|
| Probably eventually, yeah. Assuming all goes well with further
| research and development.
| fastball wrote:
| No, this is a treatment. Vaccines are preventative by priming
| your immune system, this directly targets SARS-CoV-2 itself,
| so is for people who actively have COVID.
| genewitch wrote:
| Opposite.
| neuronic wrote:
| Of course it is for therapeutics design, it's the literal
| last sentence of the abstract:
|
| "In conclusion, NTD-RBD bsAbs offer promising potential
| for the design of resilient, next-generation antibody
| therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 VOCs."
| harshreality wrote:
| Antibodies are not vaccines. Antibodies bind to an antigen
| (virus component in this case) to get the immune system to
| attack and destroy the antigen and whatever it's attached to.
|
| A vaccine causes the patient to develop specific immunity (fast
| reaction to a specific antigen) by introducing (usually
| injecting) a large amount of an antigen. That prompts the
| immune system to react by developing B-cells that produce their
| own antibodies to the antigen. It turns the body into its own
| antibody factory to deal with whatever you injected, but that
| takes time.
|
| Injecting antibodies, as in this study, bypasses the natural
| (slow) specific immunity generation process. Antibodies are
| created some other way (in a lab, or in some other animal) and
| then directly injected. It's done for serious diseases or
| dangerous toxins or immuno-compromised individuals, when
| waiting for the patient to develop their own specific immunity
| is too slow or dangerous.
|
| Critically, a vaccine allows the body to maintain the ability
| to fight off similar-enough infections for a while, but usually
| takes weeks or more to reach near full effect, sometimes
| requiring multiple shots for better effectiveness. If you're
| trying to treat an infection you think you might already have
| or will get in the next few days, vaccines only work if the
| progression of the disease is very slow, as in rabies which
| takes something like 1-2 months to make it into the CNS.
|
| Injecting antibodies is a one-shot treatment that must be
| repeated until the virus (or toxin or other bad thing) is gone.
| It's commonly done for toxins (spider or snake venoms), or
| sometimes for severe diseases (ebola, tetanus), but sars-cov-2
| has so much attention that now they're doing it for that too.
| In patients who aren't immunocompromised, antibody treatments
| for less-lethal infections give their immune systems more time
| to generate their own antibodies without developing severe
| symptoms.
|
| The similarity in the two approaches is that they both
| ultimately involve antibodies binding to coronavirus proteins.
| The difference is in where those antibodies come from, and
| whether the body can produce more at will (vaccine --[time]-->
| natural immunity), or whether you have to keep injecting them
| (antibody treatments).
|
| That's only a rough approximation. The immune system is very
| complicated. Wikipedia, or a book on molecular biology or
| immunology, will go into a lot more detail.
| ggm wrote:
| So it could be given eg daily prophylactically to health
| workers, and important functional workers during a breakout
| pandemic to ensure they can continue to work, with very high
| likelihood of exposure. If it meant less biohazard cosplay
| (really? it works but it's such a high burden to get right
| and its exhausting from what health workers say)
|
| I'd say it's worth exploring on those grounds alone. Anything
| to keep health and vital service staff functional during the
| bad times.
| harshreality wrote:
| Maybe there's a hypothetical where there's somehow rapid
| availability of specific antibodies, but no opportunity to
| vaccinate healthcare workers ahead of time, and it somehow
| makes sense to rely on antibody injections instead of PPE
| ("biohazard cosplay"). Here are some reasons why it
| probably _doesn 't_.
|
| Getting treated with antibodies don't mean you're
| asymptomatic or that you'll feel well. It only means you'll
| have less severe symptoms. You'd have healthcare workers
| walking around sick, spreading the very disease they're
| trying to treat others for. Or taking up a hospital or
| clinic bed, not treating patients, using up limited
| healthcare resources -- which, for the duration of their
| illness, is a worse outcome _for their patients_ than if
| the healthcare workers weren 't there at all.
|
| It's expensive. There's no economy of scale for an unusual
| disease outbreak. That applies to both antibody and vaccine
| stockpiles.
|
| If the disease is minor (like COVID-19 usually is for
| otherwise healthy individuals), healthcare workers might be
| willing to take a chance to avoid the hassle of PPE, but
| would their employer (such as a hospital, or MSF)? They're
| the ones who have to pay for antibody treatment if their
| healthcare employees get sick. They're the ones who have
| medical ethicists looking out for both the well-being of
| the frontline healthcare workers and patients.
|
| If the disease has a significant mortality rate,
| availability of a specific antibody treatment, even if it's
| stocked and instantly available, wouldn't motivate anyone
| to go without PPE. Nor would getting vaccinated. They're
| not guarantees of survival, and preventing healthcare
| workers from getting sick is more important than treating
| patients.
| ggm wrote:
| Yea I hadn't really thought it through. I went straight
| to a hallelujah outcome when most things "in mice" don't
| wash through, and are expensive. Disposable PPE is less
| expensive and we know it works. Sweaty and tiring, but
| works.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not to mention, PPE protects you against diseases which
| aren't COVID-19 - the common cold, influenza,
| tuberculosis... health care workers are always going to
| be safer (and keep their patients safer!) by masking up.
| nradov wrote:
| You've got to be kidding. There's no way most healthcare
| workers will ever tolerate constantly wearing masks.
| Especially not for routine ambulatory care that doesn't
| involve breaking the skin.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I wore a mask every day to work and outside for over a
| year. It's not a big deal.
| simoncion wrote:
| > It's not a big deal.
|
| Agreed. If you don't have respiratory, skin, or sensory-
| processing issues that make it a big deal, it's not a big
| deal.
|
| Given the "breaking the skin" comment, I wonder if PP is
| thinking of clear plastic face shields which protect
| against spatter, but not aerosols.
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Antibodies are just one re-definition away from becoming
| vaccines, lol
| Dwedit wrote:
| More like a better paxlovid.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I think it's the thing the powers that be said was inconclusive
| and/or ineffective (monoclonal antibodies) and in the same
| realm of conspiracy theorist homeopathic solutions. Just takes
| awhile for things to work out, it's OK.
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Exactly. Didn't you see how green and sickly these things
| made poor Mr. Rogan?
| thro1 wrote:
| > What does this mean? A better vaccine?
|
| New mutations (since some chronic, immunocompromised unable to
| clean the infection patient will get it).
| kens wrote:
| The title is "Bispecific antibodies targeting the N-terminal and
| receptor binding domains potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants
| of concern". Note that although the antibodies were only helpful
| before infection, "its therapeutic efficacy after infection was
| limited." Thus, it isn't a treatment. Also, this study was in
| mice, not humans, so this is something potentially for the
| future, not something you can use now.
| divbzero wrote:
| dang, would you be able to update the title for this thread?
| The full title is too long for HN but could be shortened to:
| "Bispecific antibodies potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants
| of concern".
| gus_massa wrote:
| Mentions like @dang are npt magic in HN, but you can send an
| email to hn@ycombinator.com
| dang wrote:
| I've put that up there now. Thanks!
| jonlucc wrote:
| Also of note because of recent political choices, these are
| humanized mice, meaning they're transgenic. They have a human
| ACE2 gene instead of the mouse ACE2 gene, which makes the human
| version of the enzyme that the COVID virus uses to enter cells.
| This isn't my exact field, so I'm not positive, but I remember
| hearing that all of the COVID mouse models require transgenic
| mice.
| timr wrote:
| There's absolutely no problem with research on transgenic mice.
| Certain groups have been trying to claim that the US president
| confused "transgenic" and "trans(sexual|gender)" in his speech
| last week, but that is incorrect. There really was a series of
| government-funded studies concerning gender in mice [1,2].
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-
| spent-...
|
| [2] Just to be clear: I have no opinion on this research, nor
| am I suggesting that it is wasteful. I'm just pointing out that
| the entire meme of _" Trump confused transgenic har har har"_
| is factually incorrect, and also deeply ironic.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| The way they complain about it though, it seems to me that
| they think mouse studies are done for the sake of mice.
| 'Crazy woke liberals want to make even mice transgender.' Is
| the whistle they're blowing.
| timr wrote:
| Our political discourse is especially stupid right now, and
| it is bi-partisan.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Drop the "both sides" falsehood.
| timr wrote:
| So far, there there are multiple replies to my comment
| arguing with me about something I didn't say (i.e. "the
| cited studies don't have anything to do with making mice
| transgender"). So yes, both sides are so eager to score
| points that they don't even bother to read anymore.
| soco wrote:
| Sweet summer child. Sometimes the context of an argument
| is just as important. If the discussion is about somebody
| who died stabbed, bringing the argument that old doctors
| helped people by bloodletting, while technically correct,
| is not exactly helping.
| redeux wrote:
| I agree with your point but I don't think using
| pejoratives helps others receive your message.
| timr wrote:
| The comment I was responding to said/implied that
| transgenic research is somehow politically prohibited
| now. This is simply false, and no amount of hand-wringing
| about what the president _meant_ is relevant to the
| question I was addressing.
|
| The one thing that is absolutely undebatable is that he
| _wasn 't_ talking about transgenic research, yet somehow
| that has become the meme.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| It's bi-partisan in the way that a paper cut is bi-
| partisan to having your leg dissolved off with acid.
| coeneedell wrote:
| Really difficult to argue that "both sides are equally to
| blame for the bad discourse" when one side had a mob of
| terrorists storm the capitol (then pardoned all of them)
| and the other side held up tiny signs during a speech.
| naasking wrote:
| Or instead of making a bad faith comparison of partisan
| violence, you could compare it to the George Floyd
| protests which injured over 700 police officers and
| killed over 20 people.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| And in which case did the party leader stand up and
| incite the mob before they went on their war path?
|
| If we're going to compare January 6 to the George Floyd
| riots, one was explicitly political, and the other one
| was fed up populace.
|
| One started with a rally intended to gas the mob up in
| hopes of securing the capital for their fuhrer. The other
| was started as the result of the outright murder of an
| individual by a state actor.
|
| One was essentially organized by the Republican Party
| leader, and the other was an impromptu display of
| discontent.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| There were quite a few Democrats that encouraged the
| protests that turned into riots during the George Floyd
| stuff.
|
| That's literally exactly the same as Trump. He encouraged
| a protest, but literally told them to peacefully protest,
| just as many of those Democrats did.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| And for how many of them were the protests formed around
| the Democrat politician?
|
| How many Democrats: got up on stage for a rally _for
| themselves_ then - > told the attendees to go and
| "peacefully protest" then -> the protestors went and
| turned into a riot?
|
| How many of the George Floyd protesters were chanting to
| hang a public official? With the intent of dismantling
| democracy?
|
| These are not the same.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Now go one step further and discuss what both sides were
| protesting.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| We can find against the crazy right by making even more
| extreme strawmen.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| You're kinda splitting hairs here which lends me to believe
| you also fail to grasp the reality of the situation. We have
| no idea if Trump really knows the difference between the
| words transgenic and transgender, but we know that these
| studies are mostly--if not completely--focused on aspects
| other than simply changing the sex of the mice. If I had to
| guess, the grant proposals probably contained enough woke
| buzzwords to make them appear to be such.
|
| source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| news/trump-tr...
| redeux wrote:
| I think we should be beyond giving the Trump regime the
| benefit of the doubt. They've shown repeated and obvious
| malicious intent. I think it's more likely that they cherry
| picked this study because they believed that their rubes
| would fall for it. I doubt Trump himself knows anything
| about the study.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Splitting hairs? The original comment implied that studies
| on transgenic mice were becoming politically verboten,
| which is unambiguously false.
|
| Only because it somewhat goes against one anti-Trump
| narrative do we now accuse the commentator of "splitting
| hairs"/being overfocused on details. Sorry, but details-
| obsession is part of Hacker News for you. Trump does more
| than enough idiotic things, I've never understood the
| desire to just make up things about him.
| aredox wrote:
| It is correct, as the White House's childish response doesn't
| address "making mouses transgender" at all, and this was
| Trump's claim.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| None of the titles of studies provided on that page support
| the assertion that the money was spent "for making mice
| transgender."
| timr wrote:
| ...I didn't say they did? Not sure why you're arguing with
| me. I just said that there's no "confusion" between these
| things and transgenic mice.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Yep. There's some immense "the Leader can never be wrong"
| energy with the response to the (factually inaccurate, and
| thus untrue) "transgender mice" line in Trump's address to
| Congress.
|
| Any remotely sane administration, faced with something
| similar, would just put out a statement about how a
| speechwriter made a mistake, the intent was different than
| the exact wording used by the President, and let it go.
|
| Instead, various lackeys are left to performatively
| scramble and media outlets are under pressure, all to find
| some twisted interpretation under which he can
| retroactively have been right all along. Madness
| reminiscent of Orwell's writing. It makes you wonder,
| happens if he says "pi is 3"?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The interesting part is that many people correctly
| understood exactly what Trump meant with his language the
| first time.
|
| For those people, it is the left that is twisting the
| words and factually incorrect ( e.g. Trump did not mix up
| transgender and transgenic).
|
| Using poetic or lose language is rhetorical style that
| trump has employed since the first term. Trump keeps
| doing it because the feeble response makes it a winning
| tactic.
|
| For many people, Trump comes out looking like the sane
| one when he calls a mouse on HRT a trans mouse, and the
| rebuttals are "The studies weren't about gender in mice
| because, gender being a social construct, mice don't have
| it" or scientists weren't "putting mice in drag and
| asking them their pronouns."
| ipaddr wrote:
| I don't think Trump is looking like a same person unless
| you consider a Trump hotel in Gaza sane. Do you?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Their wording is very convincing that they are correct, too:
|
| > The Fake News losers at CNN immediately tried to fact check
| it, but President Trump was right (as usual).
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I had to double check this was really posted on
| whitehouse.gov.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I'm really sad about this. I'm ok with the use of clear
| and even fully colloquial language by officials, but find
| myself mourning this total loss of decorum. I grew up
| believing that our officials should strive to be role
| models. I feel that by shirking this expectation, the
| current administration is eroding a central pillar of
| government as a concept.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I grew up believing that our officials should strive to
| be role models.
|
| They _are_ striving to be role models, and they _are_
| role models for their followers, and this is clearly
| visible in changea in social interactions...
| Tostino wrote:
| I always rolled my eyes a bit about the decorum calls
| when anybody would get a little rowdy. I don't know, I
| seem to find a little bit of profanity and pointed name
| calling an entirely different thing than an all out
| assault on truth and reason.
| tw04 wrote:
| The point of decorum is is that a devolution of language
| tends to result in an escalation of aggression which
| frequently ends in physical violence.
|
| You generally don't hear someone screaming "with all due
| respect I must disagree" before shooting someone.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| Does make me wonder about the 18th and early 19th C,
| where the written language was very polite and formal but
| people regularly had duels and killed each other. But
| perhaps spoken language at the time was far less polite?
| What did Hamilton and Burr shout at each other in
| Weehawken, I wonder.
| indymike wrote:
| > I grew up believing that our officials should strive to
| be role models.
|
| This is what we tell our children until they get old
| enough to process the adult world. Reality is... "it's
| complicated, ____ (son/daughter name here)." Our leaders
| (at least in the US) haven't been real role models for
| probably centuries... reality is the whole "virtuous
| king" thing has been aspirational since the ancient
| Greeks.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > Our leaders (at least in the US) haven't been real role
| models for probably centuries...
|
| Even when I disagreed with some of what he did (and
| didn't do), I absolutely can't recall a single time that
| I didn't admire the manner in which Obama spoke and
| behaved.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| President hector dwayne mountain dew camacho strikes
| again.
| mapt wrote:
| While President Camacho is shown in a more theatrical
| light, what this character actually does on screen is
|
| * find an expert who has apparently superior knowledge
| about a widespread problem afflicting his people
|
| * immediately seek guidance from that expert and
| conscript him into solving that problem
|
| * apply that guidance by directing resources to test the
| theory experimentally
|
| * begin to hold that expert accountable when their
| experiment fails to follow that expert's predictions
|
| * Stop seeking accountability and reverse course when it
| does produce results (despite this process being very
| public), and offer the expert the job of fixing more
| things.
|
| Could you ask for more? Do you think the current
| democratic discourse is above or below this level?
|
| Or non-democratic discourse for that matter. How did we
| deal with Lysenko's theories on crop yields?
| evil-olive wrote:
| > There really was a series of government-funded studies
| concerning gender in mice
|
| this is true...in the sense that if you make a list of
| government-funded studies, and ctrl-F it for "gender", and
| then ctrl-F that list for "mice", you get a non-zero number
| of results.
|
| of the $8 million they're claiming, $3.1 million went to
| "Gonadal hormones as mediators of sex and gender influences
| in asthma"
|
| so...they're studying asthma. using mice. who are given
| hormones. this is pretty far from the "they're making mice
| transgender" talking point.
|
| if you read the abstract that they link to [0]:
|
| > Starting around puberty and peaking during mid-life, women
| have increased asthma prevalence and higher rates of asthma
| exacerbations than men. Causes of these disparities remain
| unclear; however, studies have shown that sex-specific
| inflammatory mechanisms controlled by hormones contribute to
| differences in airway reactivity in response to environmental
| stimuli. Despite this, experimental models of asthma have not
| explored the contributions of sex hormones to inflammatory
| mechanisms in the female and male lung
|
| asthma affects men and women differently, and they want to
| figure out why. specifically, they're trying to isolate the
| affects of hormones on lung tissue. that seems like a
| worthwhile subject to me? a simplistic understanding of
| biology would be that lungs are lungs, and the same between
| men and women. refining that understanding seems like a good
| goal for basic research to pursue.
|
| if you continue reading the abstract, _oh my god they mention
| that trans people exist_
|
| > and no studies have explored the effects of feminizing
| hormone therapy with estrogen in the lungs of trans women
|
| but...this just seems to me like the scientific method?
| they're trying to eliminate as many uncontrolled variables as
| they can:
|
| > In Aim 2, we will study the contributions of estrogens to
| HDM-induced asthma outcomes using male and female
| gonadectomized mice treated with estradiol
|
| if you want to study the effects of sex-specific hormones, it
| seems logical that you would neuter them first, so that
| they're not producing any hormones of their own, they're only
| receiving the ones that you inject them with.
|
| so you have female mice, with ovaries removed, who are
| receiving replacement female hormones. and male mice, with
| testes removed, who are also receiving female hormones.
|
| if you want to call that "transgender mice", sure, knock
| yourself out. what I see is just a scientific experiment
| where they're tried to eliminate as many uncontrolled
| variables as possible.
|
| now, why are they only doing it with female hormones
| (estradiol)? why aren't they doing the opposite experiment
| where the male and female gonadectomized mice are given
| testosterone? I don't know for certain, but the most likely
| explanation is that testosterone is a controlled substance in
| the US (due to its use by weightlifting bros), and so doing
| experiments with it would be more difficult because of the
| increased legal requirements.
|
| 0: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10891526
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| This often happens:
|
| 1. X says that A did stupid thing B!
|
| 2. Y makes fun of X because obviously A didn't do stupid
| thing B.
|
| 3. Z (that's you) points out that A did a thing B', that is
| like B, only not stupid, but technically X described it
| accurately if tendentiously.
|
| How do you deal with that? I don't think the human
| political brain is built for this level of indirection. But
| realistically this will now always be a fight between X's
| and Y's faction, because Z's position, though _true_ , is
| too complicated to fit in a soundbite.
|
| I don't know how we get back from that. If it were truth vs
| lies it would be manageable, but the truth isn't even on
| the table because it's too big to fit into the
| argumentative paradigm.
| watwut wrote:
| > 3. Z (that's you) points out that A did a thing B',
| that is like B, only not stupid, but technically X
| described it accurately if tendentiously.
|
| It was not "technically described accurately" tho. It was
| a lie and comment you are responding to makes that clear.
|
| So I think that response to that tactic would be to
| simply call it a lie rather then "technically accurate".
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| It's more accurate to say that "a paper studied gender in
| mice" than to say "no papers studied gender in mice".
|
| edit: Nevermind I retract this. I think you're right
| about this paper in particular. I guess it comes down to
| whether a study involving weird things with gender
| hormones is "about gender"? But it still seems like the
| core debate is ultimately not very much attached to
| actual reality.
|
| edit: It's like the "chemicals in the water that turn the
| freaking frogs gay" Alex Jones meme - if you thought "no
| that's nonsense there were no chemicals in the water" you
| would know _less_ about Atrazine than Alex Jones did,
| despite Alex Jones also being wrong about what 's going
| on with the frogs. The way in which you think that
| someone is wrong can also be wrong, even if that someone
| is in fact wrong.
| pas wrote:
| the paper used the word "gender" completely
| unnecessarily, no? those are sex hormones.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| It'd be fascinating - if considerably evil - to see if we
| could induce dysphoria in mice.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| No. The studies are attempting to understand the effects
| of a specific human medical intervention called "gender-
| affirming hormone therapy" using mice as an analog. GAHT
| is an umbrella of treatments that includes more than just
| cross-sex hormones (e.g. transwomen often take
| testosterone blockers in addition to estrogen) so its a
| very reasonable use of 'gender' in context.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I love that Alex Jones example.
|
| Atrazine is causing hermaphroditic frogs, chemically
| castrating them, and turning male frogs into behavioral
| females.
|
| Trump often plays in a similar gray zone (e.g. dual
| meaning, hyperbole, simplification) with language because
| It is often a winning tactic.
|
| Trump and Jones generate soundbites that cant be easily
| refuted with democratic soundbites. Overly simplistic
| rebuttals often end up even less accurate and more
| detached from reality.
|
| I have given some thought to why this is, and I think it
| is for a few reasons. First, I think that democratic
| respondents don't share as much linguistic & conceptual
| framework with the target audience (e.g. a feminized male
| frog = a gay frog).
|
| Second, and relatedly, I think rebuttals are afraid to
| engage with certain topics, and therefore end up tying
| themselves up in knots.
|
| Last, is they have an oppositional defiant disorder where
| everything must be denied. "YES and" responses are off
| limits.
|
| They cant just say "Yes, and poor chemical regulation is
| turning the frogs gay, and that is a bad thing"
| watwut wrote:
| I think it is more simpler. The actual message is not
| something about frogs and chemicals, it is "liberals are
| stupid and demented" or "gay are feminine losers" or
| "fear, liberals harm children". It is basically just
| exaggerated stereotypical schoolyard bullying, except
| with massive audience. When you analyze chemicals and
| hermaphrodism frogs in response, you area acting like a
| stereotypical nerd who does not understand the social
| situation or just does not have it in him to hit back.
|
| The message is not scientific complain about frog, read
| message is that "we" should band up against "them" and
| collectively now bully this or that person/group. It is
| in-group bonding based on common enemy that is vilified.
|
| You can not counteract that with rational rebuttal. That
| never works, not on schoolyard, not in work, not in
| politics. The whole things is about making people feel
| certain way.
| tomrod wrote:
| > How do you deal with that?
|
| Historically, with a slap, either open handed or with a
| glove to induce a dual. But we live in more genial times
| where such egregious violence is deemed unavailable.
|
| > I don't think the human political brain is built for
| this level of indirection.
|
| Indeed. People using incompetent and mistaken assumptions
| doesn't improve on their desire to tear up the political
| foundations in the US.
| toddmorey wrote:
| It's still bullshit. For example, the last cited study ($3
| million of their claimed $8 million) aimed to find out why
| asthma is so much more prevalent in women than men and learn
| more about gender-specific inflammatory mechanisms.
|
| Being scientists, they saw an opportunity to study the
| contributions of estrogens to HDM-induced asthma outcomes.
| SHOCKING AND SCANDALOUS.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Not really worth fighting it on these issues in forums like
| HN anymore, they're becoming reddit-ized and tribal. People
| will probably read your comment as an endorsement/defense of
| Trump rather than the factual clarification it is.
| timr wrote:
| This comment thread is indeed pretty depressing.
| tonnydourado wrote:
| The studies weren't about gender in mice because, gender
| being a social construct, mice don't have it.
|
| *Some* of the studies were about the potential physiological
| effects of hormone therapy. They used mice, but the point was
| to study how humans are affected by HRT.
|
| The way the article is written makes it sound like they're
| putting mice in drag and asking them their pronouns.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _gender being a social construct, mice don 't have it._
|
| You have to be careful there. Plenty of individual animals
| in the wild exhibit social behaviors that we would
| associate with unconventional gender roles if they were
| humans. There are known evolution-based rationales for many
| if not most of these behaviors, and it's safe to say there
| are _unknown_ evolution-based rationales for the rest.
|
| We're not special.
| krapp wrote:
| Homosexuality is not transgenderism. A homosexual man can
| still identify as a man and be attracted to men. Being
| attracted to a man doesn't make them equivalent to a
| transwoman.
|
| Also conventional gender roles change over time, and vary
| by culture, because gender is performance. It used to be
| conventional for men to wear high heels and makeup and
| kiss each other on the mouth, and sexual relationships
| between men weren't always considered transgressive of
| masculine norms.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yep, all very true.
|
| I spent most of my childhood believing that homosexuality
| was unnatural, inherently sinful, and entirely unique to
| humans, because that's the spiel that the local Southern
| Baptist preachers were selling. The same is true for
| things we call "gender roles." Some male animals act in
| ways we once reflexively associated with females of their
| species, and vice versa.
|
| I'll edit the comment to remove the reference to
| homosexuality, though, because that point wasn't
| especially clear or useful.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not a Trump fan, but for many people including me, Trump
| comes out looking like the sane one when he calls a mouse
| on HRT a trans mouse, and the rebuttals are:
|
| -"The studies weren't about gender in mice because, gender
| being a social construct, mice don't have it"
|
| -Scientists weren't actually "putting mice in drag and
| asking them their pronouns."
|
| -Trump confused transgenic mice with transgender mice
| ipaddr wrote:
| The last line makes you both seem foolish because he is
| confusing both terms.
|
| It reminds me of historical elections where one candidate
| called the other homo sapiens and the ignorance of the
| public fell for it
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How so? From my point of view it seems like the
| conflation lies with the critics.
|
| The word he used was transgender, and the studies were
| all for transgender health in a mouse model.
|
| Critics are the ones bringing transgenic into the
| conversation, which neither matches what he said, or the
| majority of the studies.
|
| It is as if Bob called the ocean blue, but Sally claims
| Bob really meant red, while simultaneously pointing out
| he is wrong because the ocean actually blue. It is a
| really weak criticism.
|
| A more coherent response is simply: "Studying transgender
| health in mouse models is important, and those studies
| were a good use of money"
| consteval wrote:
| It makes zero sense to claim Trump was referring to
| transgenic mice because nobody cares about that, regardless
| of political affiliation.
|
| He attempted a bit of misinformation, which characterizes
| most of his address. Certainly, his supporters interpreted it
| to mean transgender mice. IMO, this was deliberate. If it
| wasn't deliberate, then Trump is just an idiot. If it was
| deliberate, then he's purposefully spreading misinformation
| in pursuit of some culture war.
|
| No matter how you cut it, it reflects very poorly on our
| president.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Needs an [in mice] tag
| loongloong wrote:
| Maybe a [TRL x] tag too.
|
| In the current online discourse climate...
|
| The HN community can be a good candidate to collectively, over
| time and use... develop and refine a set of commonly understood
| tags to communicate context in post titles.
|
| If not in title, then maybe in the top / "pinned" comment.
|
| If they can spread beyond HN... that would be even better.
| mgcunha wrote:
| What does TRL mean to you in this context ?
| countWSS wrote:
| All variants? but N-Terminal is not immune to mutations and the
| specific antibody will drive evolutionary selection for those
| mutations - and rapid development of new variants
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8647783/ search
| "N-Terminal"
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Sadly that reminds me how positive covid antibody test results
| haven't been a valid immunization attestation.
|
| Maybe this type of bispecific antibodies could be used to
| neutralize the spike protein which the body produces through the
| vaccine. As far as I understand the targeted deltoid muscle is a
| cell with a long life therefore procuding and releasing spikes
| for a yet unkown timeframe. Given the various specific boosters I
| can imagine one taking neutralizing antibodies to avoid a
| constant immune system stimulation.
| z991 wrote:
| There's an important detail here -- an advantage of mRNA
| vaccines is that mRNA does not last all that long in cells [1].
| Thus, even if the cells live a long time, they won't produce
| spike proteins for very long (instructions for the production
| will be degraded and thus not available).
|
| The vaccine's longer-term effectiveness comes from the immune
| system's memory B cells response to the short-lived expression
| of spike proteins.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA#Degradation
| weaksauce wrote:
| you mean memory T cell right? As I understand it B cells are
| created by T cells to an acute infection.(they also kill
| infected cells but this is a gross simplification and i'm not
| a epidemiologist.)
| jbritton wrote:
| Some individuals have spike protein after 700 days.
|
| https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/19/immune-markers-post-
| vaccina...
| bogtog wrote:
| I'm amazed by how virtually every single biology paper in a
| great-to-elite journal has stunning figures (even setting aside
| the protein diagrams). This makes me wonder how much of advisors'
| efforts go toward teaching their students graphic design
| lebimas wrote:
| Speaking as a former undergraduate and then graduate research
| scientist at a top 3 biomedical engineering program in the
| United States, I can tell you, students spend an unseemly
| amount of time on figures. The professor of one of the labs I
| worked in said an aesthetic figure can be the difference
| between getting into Nature or not. His collaborator on that
| paper happened to be a well-known professor who had papers
| published in Nature a handful of times. That was, apparently,
| one of his secrets.
| aprct wrote:
| Would you be able to share the name(s) of said professor(s)?
| I'm asking for a scientist I know who is researching figures
| and their impacts on publication. They'd be very interested
| in this!
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