Quote from: RandyFolds on September 20, 2011, 04:34:38 PM

Quote from: JBDive on September 20, 2011, 05:16:54 AM

Quote from: RandyFolds on September 20, 2011, 04:56:44 AM

Quote from: JBDive on September 20, 2011, 04:10:55 AM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on September 20, 2011, 03:08:12 AM

Quote from: AngelusWebDesign on September 19, 2011, 08:18:22 PM

I just don't see the benefit of spending electricity on something of dubious value. Scientists have access to all sorts of computers, including clusters of off-the-shelf PCs connected by ETHERNET, as well as actual supercomputers. They don't need my $20 in wasted electricity per month. Besides, I'm firmly convinced that cancer has been cured several times over. They just won't let us have the cure, since chemotherapy is so profitable. And let's not forget that the Georgia Guidestones call for a world population of only 500 million people -- curing a killer like cancer would be counter-productive to that goal.

Long story short -- I'm not a sucker. They don't need my computer, or my electricity.

Why remain ignorant. If you don't want to fold then don't but why make up claims that are false.

Folding isn't dubious. It has already resulted in numerous breakthroughs.

Building and running a supercomputer is expensive insanely expensive. Folding has a combined computational power of 6404 TFLOP.

To put that into perspective the most powerful supercomputer in the world is ~8000 TFLOPs. The 2nd largest is ~4700 TFLOPS.

No international medical research program in the world even makes the top 100 supercomputer list ( sub 80 TFLOPs).

Simply put without access to Folding @ Home the computational power available to protein researchers would be maybe 1% of what they have access to. The amount of simulations completed this year w/ Folding program would have taken a century. More likely without access to computational power that would lead to discovers in a researcher's lifetime the research would never even be undertaken.

The downside, once a major cure is found from one the results that thousands of people put their computer to work on there will be some big pharma outfit come in, patent the drug or process and then turn around and charge those same helping hands a 5000 percent markup for access to the cure.

Even if a cure is found, it doesn't mean that there isn't stuff left to discover. Besides, Folding@Home is about protein folding, not curing cancer.

Knowing how certain proteins act could in fact lead to a cure or more directed treatments. As with all new treatments however if they cannot be made into a profit center you will never see them come to market. Case in point there are several totally natural treatments that have shown to be very positive in the treatment of cancer which you won't even find current trials on because no big pharma will back those trials because there is no potential patent they will be able to enforce.

You have no idea how drug development works. I have spent the last 8 years throwing myself at a prostate cancer vaccine synthesized from a marine snail's blood. We won't hand it over to bayer to be quashed, and so we are all going broke floating it as far as we can. You won't find it on current trials, but it has been into trials on four occasions now. There is most definitely an enforceable patent. 'Big Pharma' wants it bad.

Once again...protein folding is about protein interaction. Yes, that information can help lead to a cure, but to suggest it IS the cure is just foolish. Fuckin' Biochemistry...how does it work?

First off I don't really feel like being insulted by somebody who doesn't know one thing about me. Second off I have dug into multiple "cures" for certain types of cancer that have shown great promise in the lab and even results in limited trials but that research is dead in the water because of no funding by big pharma into more natural cures. I have spoke with the researchers themselves and asked about further trials and was point blank told that any further trials on a larger group would not happen by them because of the lack of funding, their words are below since this was just a few weeks back:

" there is no patent on it. This means that if some company spent millions on clinical trials, anyone else could come in and sell it cheaper because they had no patent costs to recoup.

A change in the law is needed so that if some company performs clinical trials, they should be able to obtain an exclusive right to sell. Would you go into business to lose money, no matter if you helped people?"

As to protein folding thank you for admitting I was correct.