It's always a surprise to read your posts. They are just full of facts and astonishing information . Keep doing this my friend I love your work.
It's always a surprise to read your posts. They are just full of facts and astonishing information . Keep doing this my friend I love your work.
While we're talking fun facts, toxoplasma gondii is the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, which is the disease Daraprim treats, which is the drug Martin Shkreli is known for.
I don't have fancy references to back any of this up like @justtryme90, but as I recall from when I was reading into it last year, tons of people carry the parasite but very few people actually contract toxoplasmosis, unless they're immunocompromised, such as in HIV patients. (or maybe lupus, because it's always lupus)
Hence why a lot of media outlets were reporting "drug company hikes price on drug used to treat HIV patients", which I believe led to a huge misconception that this was a drug used to treat HIV/AIDS itself.
Or something to that effect. I'm sure if this was Reddit, someone who knew the exact science would correct me, Cunningham's Law and all.
If you carry Toxoplasma gondii then you HAVE toxoplasmosis. It's just that toxoplasmosis is generally asymptomatic, you are indeed correct in that it causes a much bigger issue in immune compromised people.
Ugh. Whether or not there was a misconception surrounding the outrage Shkreli didn't do pharmaceuticals any favors in the battle of public perception.
As a side note you are also correct about pryimethamine (Daraprim) being used to treat toxoplasmosis, it isn't an AIDS medication, but a way to deal with one of the other complications of the sputtering immune system.
Fair call.
For me I was fascinated by the phenomenon of how that story went viral, and how the facts were presented and re-presented, essentially mutating as the facts became more blurred. I feel like journalists are being a little more responsible with their reporting in 2017, both in terms of fact-checking and also in the way they present key facts. Likewise, people seem to be a lot better at google'ing things they see on Facebook to check accuracy.
But I digress... a lot.
Like a game of telephone. This is why I think better understanding of science, and a wide variety of other fundamental pieces of knowledge are becoming more and more a requirement for every day life. We can't always depend on others to get it right, we must have a basic understanding of things to know when we are being bullshitted.