
The Maker of Gore-Tex Is Experimenting With an Artificial Cornea - todd8
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-cornea/
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varelse
As someone with Fuchs Dystrophy (which is slowly blinding me), and writing
style aside, I'd like to see the aging billionaires of Web 2.0 throw money at
more ideas like this instead of at Hail Mary passes to immortality. Is that so
much to ask for? I think it's realistic to live to 100 with 90+ good years.
Without fundamental breakthroughs in science, it seems like a hard trek to get
beyond that.

[https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/fuchs-corneal-
dyst...](https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/fuchs-corneal-
dystrophy.htm)

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guelo
Instead of relying on billionaire's whims I'd rather we taxed them more and
used CDC's and NIH's epidemiology and scientist's opinions to fund research
that benefits society the most.

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melling
You want to tax all 536 billionaires? Capital gains perhaps?

I’m not exactly sure why everyone middle class and above wouldn’t want to pay
a little more for more medical research. We’ll all likely benefit. The ”let’s
just tax the rich” is only going to get us so far.

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r00fus
Any stronger taxation scheme to make the rich pay their share is probably
fine.

I personally prefer a small financial transaction tax.

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archey1
In the United States:

The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3
percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income
taxes.

The top 1% was 1.4 million returns in 2016. The top 50% is 140.9 million
returns.

How much is "fair"?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-14/top-3-of-
u-s-taxpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016)

~~~
dmix
Income tax is also hardly the only tax wealthy people pay. It's probably the
least interesting tax to consider.

I keep reading people talking about billionaires "hoarding" their money, as if
it was just sitting in a vault like Scrooge McDuck and not being reinvested in
countless businesses, while only a small percentage is going towards their
'luxury' lifestyle (which they also assume goes all into useless flashy cars
and fashion like lower-tier wealthy celebrities they see on TV who also
frequently happen to end up broke... for some reason).

We should tax that consumption, not the investments the return value and
therefore jobs, technology, science, etc to society). Or focus on the far
wealthier corporations who pay no direct tax through various financial
trickery and/or incentives to off-shore it instead of keeping it locally to
spend (although most still pay tons in taxes through other means).

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zzzzzzzza
neither income nor consumption should be taxed, instead, consider taxing that
which we do not produce via the work of our own hands, such as land value
(which ultimately comes from nature/the productivity of the surrounding
community).

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ShorsHammer
Consumption should very much be taxed considering it is the simplest way to
claw back all the environmental externalities in an ever polluted world with
no one willing to take responsibility.

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zzzzzzzza
if you really want to do that levy a carbon tax or a packaging tax or
something more direct

a consumption tax would also penalize transactions that might decrease
environmental impact e.g. solar panels, or of tools used in the construction
of a composting toilet, those being easy, obvious examples.

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sverige
I remember when their clothing line came out decades ago. These days I have
what is essentially a Gore-Tex aorta attached to my heart. I'll bet they make
a difference in eye repair. They're a pretty interesting company.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Interesting that you mention this. My gut reaction to the article was along
the lines of “smart rich maker doing some crazy innovative shit in an area
totally unrelated from what they are known for”. Is there anything specific
about Gore-Tex that would make you happy that they are pursuing the problem vs
some other rich nerd?

Not that rich nerds pursuing problems is a bad thing, I just want to know more
about Gore-Tex specifically.

~~~
folli
[https://www.gore.com/products/industries/life-
sciences/medic...](https://www.gore.com/products/industries/life-
sciences/medical-industry)

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dequor
It was dusky evening, the clock knobs pointing at the two numbers before
midnight all the while a tiny light serendipitously blinking in the distance.
It was that moment in time I knew I was about to throw up reading yet another
BB article ...

~~~
unixhero
Yeah that wasn't for the faint of heart. Pretty disgusting to be honest.

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johnmales
Existing artificial corneas have great difficulties with biocompatibility and
more critically stability of the interface between the implant and the host
eye tissues. Currently donor corneas are a much better option for most where
this is available.

If they can crack the issues this will make a difference, but they are not
easy issues to solve. Corneal blindness is important cause of blindness
worldwide, with a lot of the burden in places where corneal transplants are
not available or not practical.

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new_guy
It's an unfortunate name to be associated with eyes!

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gumby
Is the 1976 organizational memo online? I googled a little but couldn’t find
it, just references to it.

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b_tterc_p
360 image was cool. But it made me swipe left and back out of the page.

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freefal
Swipe navigation in mobile Safari is a problem. Lichess.org recently did a
very nice redesign that made it more mobile friendly. But the user can’t drag
and drop pieces from the leftmost file because it’s interpreted as navigation.
Safari doesn’t allow the webpage to listen for this event so there’s no way to
call ‘preventDefault’. Basically unfixable if you want to use the whole screen
as far as I know.

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unixhero
Why is this okay?

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everyone
On a related note, I highly recommend this doc. (Goretex is made with Teflon)

[https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek](https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek)

Chemicals used to make Teflon, which cause cancer, deformity, etc, have been
found in the blood of pretty much everyone worldwide.

~~~
hannasanarion
No, goretex and Teflon are made with an intermediate applicator chemical
called PFOA, which is found in high quantities in carpets, wax paper, and some
cleaning products and has been dumped in water sources near chemical
factories. Its presence is negligible in clothing and cookware.

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everyone
You say 'No' and then do not refute my statement, Just make a minor nitpicky
remark (that its actually PFOA we're talking about) and some other true but
ancillary remarks.

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knolax
Not knowing what Gore-Tex I thought it was a TeX variant for the vision
impaired. According to Wikipedia: "Gore-Tex is a waterproof, breathable fabric
membrane and registered trademark of W. L. Gore and Associates."

~~~
username223
Yeah, it is a name for several types of fabric used in a lot of outdoor
equipment. They all claim to be both waterproof and breathable, but in
reality, they are mostly either one or the other. Waterproof Gore-Tex will
fill with condensation, and breathable Gore-Tex will soak through. Pick your
poison.

~~~
Marsymars
There are tradeoffs between waterproofing (hydrostatic head measured in mm)
and breathability (measured in g/m^2/24h), but "one or the other" isn't really
accurate, there are products that do very well at both.

