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Notes -
Perhaps weird comment here as I've just had two bottles of wine for pain relief (not getting into that). But I just wanted to make a comment on EA's bizarre (to me) priorities, with the headline example of malaria nets.
I've had malaria in the DRC, and if I had died, as I came extremely close to doing many times, it would have been about as easy a death as one can get (maybe 1.5/10). By contrast, speaking as someone who gets punched in the face for a living, a bad hit to the liver is 9/10 pain for 30 seconds and if liver disease comes even remotely close in pain levels to that, donating money to cure liver cancer is infinitely more aligned to EA values than, well, basically anything I can think of. I suspect most malaria-net supporters are young enough that they have never experienced actual pain.
Sounds like EA should work on better pain relievers so folks like you can spare their livers all those bottles of wine. But for real, is supporting the development of better pain relief an EA priority? There's interesting work to be done there, some recent progress being made on sodium channel blockers I think. On top of the whole "make everything less painful for everyone" angle, there's how most of the ongoing opioid trainwreck could have been averted if we had real painkillers that didn't require escalating doses to keep working.
One of Scott's grants has to do with the genetics of altering / removing pain receptors, I belive.
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