America's NIH Scientists Have a Cancer Breakthrough. Layoffs are Delaying It. (msn.com) 137
Scientists "demonstrated a promising step toward using a person's own immune cells to fight gastrointestinal cancers" at America's National Institutes of Health (or NIH), reports the Washington Post.
But the results were published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday — "the same day the agency was hit with devastating layoffs..." The treatment approach is still early in its development; the personalized immunotherapy regimen shrank tumors in only about a quarter of the patients with colon, rectal and other GI cancers enrolled in a clinical trial. But a researcher who was not involved in the study called the results "remarkable" because they highlight a path to a frustratingly elusive goal in medicine — harnessing a person's own immune defenses to target common solid tumor cancers. Until now, cell-based immunotherapy has worked mainly on blood cancers, such as leukemia, but not the solid cancers that seed tumors in the breast, brain, lungs, pancreas and GI tract...
But the progress arrives at a sad time for science — and for patients, said the leader of the work, NIH immunotherapy pioneer Steven Rosenberg. Two patients' treatments using the experimental therapy had to be delayed because NIH's capacity to make personalized cell therapies has been slowed by the firing of highly skilled staff and by purchasing slowdowns. Those occurred even before major layoffs took place Tuesday... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to an email asking about clinical trial delays with a statement: "NIH and HHS are complying with President Trump's executive order."
It's "a very exciting study," said Patrick Hwu, president of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Finding ways to tailor this cell-based immunotherapy approach to common solid tumors that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths has remained a major scientific challenge... Rosenberg and colleagues first tried to create tumor infiltrating lymphocytes [or "TILs"] using the method that worked in melanoma for 18 patients with GI cancers that had spread. It failed completely. In a second iteration, his team sequenced the mutations present in each patient's tumor and used that information to sift out and expand the TILs that could home in on that patient's specific tumor cells. The results were far from a triumph, but provided a clue — this time, three of 39 patients' tumors shrank. In the last stage of the trial, the scientists added a drug called pembrolizumab that takes the brakes off immune cells. This time, eight of the 34 patients responded.
"Right now, only a few labs in the country can do what they just did," Hwu said.
While Rosenberg is already working "to refine and improve upon the results," he told the Post that two scientists involved in the specialized process of preparing the cells to treat patients were fired in the probationary purge. "We've had to slow down our work and delay the treatment of some patients...."
And there's also dramatically fewer people now who can purchase research materials, which the Post says it "making it slower and more difficult to obtain supplies."
But the results were published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday — "the same day the agency was hit with devastating layoffs..." The treatment approach is still early in its development; the personalized immunotherapy regimen shrank tumors in only about a quarter of the patients with colon, rectal and other GI cancers enrolled in a clinical trial. But a researcher who was not involved in the study called the results "remarkable" because they highlight a path to a frustratingly elusive goal in medicine — harnessing a person's own immune defenses to target common solid tumor cancers. Until now, cell-based immunotherapy has worked mainly on blood cancers, such as leukemia, but not the solid cancers that seed tumors in the breast, brain, lungs, pancreas and GI tract...
But the progress arrives at a sad time for science — and for patients, said the leader of the work, NIH immunotherapy pioneer Steven Rosenberg. Two patients' treatments using the experimental therapy had to be delayed because NIH's capacity to make personalized cell therapies has been slowed by the firing of highly skilled staff and by purchasing slowdowns. Those occurred even before major layoffs took place Tuesday... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to an email asking about clinical trial delays with a statement: "NIH and HHS are complying with President Trump's executive order."
It's "a very exciting study," said Patrick Hwu, president of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Finding ways to tailor this cell-based immunotherapy approach to common solid tumors that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths has remained a major scientific challenge... Rosenberg and colleagues first tried to create tumor infiltrating lymphocytes [or "TILs"] using the method that worked in melanoma for 18 patients with GI cancers that had spread. It failed completely. In a second iteration, his team sequenced the mutations present in each patient's tumor and used that information to sift out and expand the TILs that could home in on that patient's specific tumor cells. The results were far from a triumph, but provided a clue — this time, three of 39 patients' tumors shrank. In the last stage of the trial, the scientists added a drug called pembrolizumab that takes the brakes off immune cells. This time, eight of the 34 patients responded.
"Right now, only a few labs in the country can do what they just did," Hwu said.
While Rosenberg is already working "to refine and improve upon the results," he told the Post that two scientists involved in the specialized process of preparing the cells to treat patients were fired in the probationary purge. "We've had to slow down our work and delay the treatment of some patients...."
And there's also dramatically fewer people now who can purchase research materials, which the Post says it "making it slower and more difficult to obtain supplies."
relevant Trump lie (Score:1, Insightful)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"President Trump could have the cure for cancer and the Democrats would still be upset."
Yeah, Trump would destroy the cure if he "had" it. Democrats know that if Trump were to have the cure for cancer he would deny it to the people to spite his enemies. And it's not just Democrats, is all thinking people, it's everyone not in the Trump cult.
Sure, we know the entire premise is absurd, nothing Trump could ever do would result in any good for the people and, of course, the pe
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Make America Healthy Again!
And live long enough to use Social Security and Medicare -- oh, wait ... /s
(Or at least try to use them, given all the chain-sawing.)
Re: relevant Trump lie (Score:2, Flamebait)
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This is an utterly insane post.
Re:relevant Trump lie (Score:4, Insightful)
The unmitigated gall for this lady to accuse the Democrats of being obsessed with personality as conservatives have given themselves fully over to cargo-cult personalist politics while they abandon all their principles they told me they believed for the previous decades of our lives.
Free trade? Nope, not anymore.
Education? That's for losers, sew the shirts you peasant.
America as leader of the free world? That's baby stuff, abandon your allies, isolate yourself.
Freedom of speech? So long as your don't say anything bad about *King Trump*
Privacy from the government? Too bad, illegally sieze those IRS records so we can deport people. ICE can use whatever info it wants no matter how privacy invading it is. We pinky swear this won't used nefariously.
Respect for the courts and the process? Nah, that takes too long and is too much work, just go around it.
This is also the admin who is shipping people off to a 3rd world concentration camp and now Republicans are fine because "those are the wrong kind of people"
Every accusation is a projection. Conservative principles aren't a pedestal anymore, they're made of sand. It's absolutely pathetic.
Re: FTFY (Score:2)
Freedom of speech? So long as your don't say anything bad about *Emperor Trump*
Re: relevant Trump lie (Score:2)
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Crippling debt spending? You mean the Reagan tax cuts that Clinton had to fix. Or do you mean the Bush Jr. tax cuts that Obama failed to fix, or el Bunko's last round of tax cuts? All these increased the debt and didn't nothing for the economy. Rich people do not spend enough and investment will follow demand, not because you gave rich people more money to piss off on their foibles.
So take you large large-number poster index and shove it. It is clear you do not have the length of time necessary to keep trac
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Please do explain the path forward that will offer you prosperity. Might I offer you an egg while you get your thoughts together?
The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm shocked (shocked!) that the guy who said he'd tear everything down with a wrecking ball, then set fire to the remains is doing exactly that.
People didn't believe he'd actually do those things, though they believed him about lowering the cost of "groceries", etc.. ...
They only heard and believed what they wanted. Now they get what they actually voted for
Donald Trump's Weird Definition Of "Groceries" Is Going Viral [buzzfeed.com]
Re:The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:4, Insightful)
Shut down NIH funding and you shut down the ecosystem that produces these discoveries - including the one that might keep you alive when you need it.
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Remember, theres a guy now in charge of the CDC and rest of the govt med orgs who literally believes that vaccines can cause a disease that your born with (autism).
God knows how the whackos propose that, maybe via time travel. (Yes thats a ludicrous strawman and yet its the only logical way for vaccines to cause autism, by somehow travelling backwards in time to before birth).
HE is in charge, and its a goddamn travesty.
Re: The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:2)
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Sure Ivan, whatever you say.
Re: The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:3)
Okay, but when you halt, like, all government funded cancer research, you're not just losing out on what looks promising. You're losing out on what was about to be promising. Or what wasn't promising, so you don't waste time studying it later. In short: We're also losing out on the "unknown unknowns."
This isn't just academic. A family friend had their clinical trial canceled.
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If you honestly believe there’s suddenly been a breakthrough in curing cancer that might translate into anything a sane world would hope for, you’re more gullible than a Biden believer drunk on Harris orator sauce.
We have made many breakthroughs in curing cancer over the years, and the survival rate dropping with treatment is a testament to that. Why are you so jaded? Did you only exist on a binary plain that can process "yes cancer exists" "no cancer stopped existing, we cured it"?
If so, don't ever comment on anything medical. Ever.
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>>more gullible than a Biden believer drunk on Harris orator sauce.
if you're trying to be clever you should take this bit back and workshop it a while
Oh Jesus Christ (Score:1, Interesting)
You people need to stop bitching about stupid shit. In a few weeks, months at the most, they'll reorganize and move forward again on whatever this really is. I'm sick of paying for redundant federal workers, every one of which thinks their job is irreplaceable simply because managers have never been under pressure to do more with less.
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
In a few weeks, months at the most, they'll reorganize and move forward again on whatever this really is.
We're already 2.5 months into this administration. When will the winning begin? How long should we stay quiet and wait?
I know you want to believe that this administration is carefully removing redundant workers. But when they arbitrarily cut all the new staff and then a bunch of existing staff, with no consideration for the value of what they do or who will replace them, at some point you have to conclude that these are blind ideologues, not enlightened leaders.
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I dunno, you guys seemed content to sit on your hands while the media crowed victory as Biden (or whoever really controlled that marionette) burned the house down. Great that you've suddenly found some fervor to look after the country's interests. There may be hope for you yet.
Elections have consequences.
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No shit. This is still better than the alternative which was presented.
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Care to elaborate?
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:3)
If you can presuppose a Harris-Waltz Adminstrating worse than what we're seeing, you can presuppose it to be worse than anything.
I'll spell it out for you: You're the voter who would still vote for Trump if he shot someone on 5th Ave.
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so what you're saying is, "the next six months will be crucial"
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sick of paying for redundant federal workers, every one of which thinks their job is irreplaceable simply because managers have never been under pressure to do more with less.
It's remarkable how confidently sweeping statements are made about organizations, especially by those with little to no understanding of how they actually function. But sure, keep believing the narrative.
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Informative)
Yep. My wife is a state worker in the department of health who is primarily funded via federal grants. This latest round of funding claw backs is not doing anything to promote efficiency. Her team was already decimated and they were already trying to "do more with less". Now they are losing even more people with institutional knowledge. If "making America healthy again" is the priority, the government sure does have a funny way of showing it by cutting funding for health departments across the board.
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This is like the CDC STD lab effectively being shut down [statnews.com]. Now there is no way to track STD outbreaks on a national scale, no sharing of information among states, no central location to get the information on drug resistant STDS.
Another side effect
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:2)
Probably similar for government spending. This is not solved by halving the budget though. Oh well... the proof is in the pudding. Let Trump and Musk have their way. We will find out who was right. Greetings from the other side of the ocean.
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What's worse? Forcing this research into the private sector, or having millions die in the depression resulting from the economic collapse that will result from the National Debt exceeding our ability to handle it?
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If Trump were doing anything about the deficit then you might have a point, but he's suggesting increasing it through tax cuts and has implemented cuts to the IRS (meaning we're not even collecting all the money that's owed). Shows it's not a serious priority and I would expect to see the deficit skyrocket as the economy collapses
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", but he's suggesting increasing it through tax cuts and has implemented cuts to the IRS (meaning we're not even collecting all the money that's owed). "
We're already failing to collect almost a trillion dollars a year. Why? Because the income taxes are a very poor way to raise revenue. They are way too easily avoided, and way to easily defrauded (evasion.)
But the most important feature is that the income taxes severely suppress American business profitability. That is why, whenever they are cut - Ke
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so the NIH scientists studying cancer are "redundant", eh
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You have no clue how research works. This could well spell years of delay.
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Then why bother listing an uninhabited island? The entire premise is nearly identical to the answer ChatGPT gives. https://www.theverge.com/news/... [theverge.com]
Yet even more evidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet even more evidence little to no thought is going into these layoffs. "Promising results towards a cure for cancer? Well that's just going to have to wait because layoffs".
I'd have been in favor of an intelligent and thorough review of the bureaucracy followed by layoffs where appropriate but from what we've seen this administration has clearly skipped the review portion of the process and gone straight to layoffs. The Democrats are going to be left putting the pieces back together again for years after this and it will cost our country far more than any of these layoffs ever saved us.
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To be precise, this researcher claims to have "demonstrated a promising step", not "results". They say that the voyage of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but so does a trip to the refrigerator for another beer.
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Thanks for correcting my poor wording. Now maybe we can do something about that stick up your ass.
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Gotta love the ever insightful AC posters. They may not have two brain cells to rub together but they sure get an A for effort.
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Why are gay slurs the first word you think of?
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and to think you believe this is actually clever
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Don't be so hard on them, clearly they're doing their best!
A terrifying amount of thought is going into it (Score:5, Informative)
Basically they want to turn America into Saudi Arabia. A handful of kings and queens, a very tiny number of people serving them and a vast vast sea of extraordinarily poor people kept down by a combination of brutal violence and religion. All of it maintained in perpetuality by technology that didn't exist the last time we threw off the yoke of slavery.
It's called techno feudalism.
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Besides, it's the policies of Democrats that are putting us on course to have fewer and fewer taxpayers surrounded by welfare recipients and illegal aliens. That's your techno-feudalism.
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Besides, it's the policies of Democrats that are putting us on course to have fewer and fewer taxpayers surrounded by welfare recipients and illegal aliens.
Boy are you going to be surprised with what happens with welfare recipients when the coming recession arrives.
Claiming the party of "tax cuts for the wealthy" has done anything meaningful towards halting the decline of our middle class is laughable.
Small enough to drown in a bathtub (Score:2)
The right wing don't actually want to kill the baby (The baby is government in case you've lost track of the analogy). What they want is small state governments that they can control with their money and power because a large federal government can't be controlled. In as large as America it's too big and no amount of money can buy off every election. Overtime progress hap
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They have a 300-page document called project 2025 with multiple pages about it. It's a government purge.
Who are "they" in this context? It's not the Republican Party, they didn't publish Project 2025. It's not Trump. The people in the group that published this document undoubtedly includes some Republicans and people that voted for Trump but that doesn't mean "they" have any support from the Republican party, Trump, Vance, Musk, or anyone else related to these people.
If you want to know what to expect from this "government purge" then look at the Republican platform document, statements made by Trump and t
The billionaires and the ruling class (Score:2)
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Not only is that crazy but these layoffs are not at all confined to new hires.
In regards to new hires though, very clearly someone with understanding of what their department needs has already determined these hires were necessary. That's why they were hired. While I'm sure in reality some were not actually necessary there are going to be a ton that were quite important that we're now just doing without.
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Trump could UNcure cancer on 5th Ave. and still win
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...a third term.
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Hahaha. You're ridiculous.
First you're contradicting me by telling me my own thoughts (thanks by the way, I didn't even know I was thinking those things!) and then you claim "we have no choice but to fire people almost at random". What utter bullshit. How is it so hard for someone in government to go "No let's not fire them, they're working on bird flu". And this shit KEEPS HAPPENING.
There is nothing impossible about properly reviewing the federal government one department at a time. It would just take both
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Who is going to review each of the thousands of departments one at a time to figure out that employees 72686 and 7190t0/zb6 are needed while 92827658 and 29395868 and 5254796 are not?
One accomplishes something like this in the same manner one approaches most seemingly impossibly large tasks. Break it down into approachable pieces and then get to work.
There is nothing impossible about reviewing the federal government. That's just a fiction you idiots are telling each other to feel better about your boy's idiot policies and actions. Firing FDA inspectors during a bird flu epidemic, firing vital nuclear arsenal employees, firing necessary medical researchers; none of these things are unavo
Is there a chance Trump won't ruin America? (Score:1)
Is there any respected economist still now openly saying that there is that chance ?
I'm genuinely curious.
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"it doesn’t appear to me that the Trump administration is actually striking terror into foreign governments so much as repeatedly punching itself in the face."
https://archive.ph/7QAiw/again?url=https://www.ft.com/content/64937cfe-bb62-4a0a-990f-503344e9c58a
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Ohh.. yeah (Score:1, Informative)
Name last drug that was developed by NIH?
10+ years they've been "involved" in development of Keytruda.
You would think today its free or at-cost to produce (think 10-50 cents/pill)? Nope.
Its $22K for every 6 weeks of infusions.
We pay these degenerates $48B for research and development, and we don't even get guaranteed low rates from manufacturers.
Get fucked.
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Every $1 the NIH generates $2+ of economic activity.
NIH supports much of the first step research that pharma companies turn into clinical trials and products later. GLP-1 began in part with NIH research.
What you are asking for would mean the NIH should have more funding and more authority. Wanna bet if Keytruda get's more or less expensive byt the end of this term.
Re:Silly premise (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, it's silly, but expected, because it gets in the headlines written by lazy journalists (as here) whereas deeper, more thought-out objections to Trump's actions won't ( or don't exist ).
"Breakthrough" (Score:2, Insightful)
I keep hearing about miracle breakthroughs whenever researchers need money but they never go into production.
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Re:"Breakthrough" (Score:5, Informative)
Progress depends on the type of cancer, but overall research is making a substantial difference: Between 2000 and 2021, the cancer incidence rate per 100,000 people fell by 5.7%, while the mortality rate dropped by 27.5%. https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
Recent immunotherapies like this one really do look like breakthroughs that will accelerate that rate of improvement. For instance, 2 minutes of googling showed this one reduced or eliminated tumors in 82% of patients such that no further treatment was needed, and that's across several different types of tumor-based (solid) cancer like TFA refers to. https://www.cancer.gov/news-ev... [cancer.gov]
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I keep hearing about cost savings and trimming the fat yet my grocery bill steadily climbs.
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I keep hearing about miracle breakthroughs whenever researchers need money but they never go into production.
WTF are you talking about. Miracle breakthroughs go into production all the time. Cancer is a really big field and we have made leaps and bounds in our ability to treat / cure people to the point where the typical approach to oncology is virtually incomparable to oncology of 10 years ago.
Your odds of dying have been hugely diminished. You can thank the medical profession that they don't withhold the breakthrough treatments from non-believers.
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What the NIH does is take risks; they spend money on things that are technically unknowns. THey can do that because the government can afford to whereas a private company might go out of business with risks like that. Once they find something that works and develops it, then companies can take over and bring them to market, which they're much better at than the government.
Keytruda [wikipedia.org] is an example
For the Fox News viewers (Score:4, Informative)
Federal salaries make up 5% of the country's budget. https://www.marketplace.org/20... [marketplace.org] Musk is doing theater for the simple minded.
Re:For the Fox News viewers (Score:4, Insightful)
"I only take home $1000 a week. What can we cut?"
"We spend $50 a week on a maid service. Can we cut that?"
"Don't be simple-minded! That's only 5% of our budget!"
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What an incredibly dishonest interpretation. Good work, your dear leader would be proud.
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You're equating the federal government with a maid service. Sigh.
I'll just remind you that this "maid service" does the following, in part:
- conducts research on diseases and epidemics
- inspects the food we eat
- keeps aircraft from crashing into each other
- monitors and predicts weather patterns
- protects the country from invaders
- provides social security to retirees and others in need (e.g., disabled)
- provides medical insurance to retirees
- provides medical care and other services to veterans
- and so on
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Complaining that what is being cut is too small a part of the budget to bother with means nothing will ever be cut.
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And a penny saved is a penny earned.
Complaining that what is being cut is too small a part of the budget to bother with means nothing will ever be cut.
+5 Insightful. It's a shame that I have no moderation points left.
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Do you honestly think you will somehow pay less taxes after all this? You're effectively paying higher taxes right now with tariffs on everything.
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If it were only just theater, then it would not be so bad. What he is doing is massive damage that may not even be fixable anymore.
TRAITOR TRUMP ENDS CURE FOR CANCER BIGLY (Score:1)
FLORIDA - Speaking from a golf course and giving no shits about the 340 million people he was elected to represent, stupidest president ever announced today that he's proud to have listened to non-medical professionals, non-budgetary professionals, loony loomers, and idiots throughout to ENSURE that American have no future healthcare, no future maternity care, no neonatal healthcare, no social security....
And no cure to any form of cancer. Science is just bigly not something he gets.
What a bright orange p
Cure, or Political Mind-Fucking Games. (Score:1, Interesting)
If the scientists at NIH want to claim they have a breakthrough for the horrific problem of cancer in humans, that’s fine. In fact, that’s great news for a planet suffering.
But if this is some kind of game they’re playing because TDS has infected the NIH, then I certainly hope that the class-action lawsuit filed against the NIH for mental torture and anguish among the suffering amounts to fucking trillions.
NIH, you had better not be playing fucking political games.
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What great thing it must be for you folks to have the invisible boogy man that is "the deep state".
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NIH (Score:2)
So the cure for cancer was Not Invented Here.
10 years ago a thread like this (Score:2)
I've noticed the right wing are keeping to save spaces where their ideas aren't challenged. It's so blindingly obvious that their economic and social ideas don't work in the real world that they kind of have to.
In related news most maga hats are knock offs made in China. The ones directly from Trump are made in the United States because it was embarra
Anonymous is right (not Right) (Score:1)
The reason you do not see the Right is that you people censored, deplatformed, harassed, fired, alienated, downvoted, marked as spam, etc. all their posts for years.
We no longer care about talking to you; we talk to moderates. Leftists intend to execute us [nypost.com] and we believe that when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And maybe toss them out of helicopters for being mental defectives who are dangerous like all insane, unrealistic, and narcissistic people.
I'm going to take a different track here (Score:1)
I'll caveat with saying that the NIH not only does good research internally, it also funds quite a bit of exploratory research that leads to a great many good developments down the road, and all of that is being hurt by both tariffs and layoffs.
The other side of this coin however is that cell therapies simply have not worked to become mai
Very dramatic article (Score:2)
Two probationary employees were let go. The rest are up for renewal in 2025 and 2026. Is this really a "catastrophe" or just Washington Post and MSN spin?
Layoffs suck but they have been a fact of life everywhere but the federal government. Now it's hitting them and they will have to manage like the rest of us in the private sector.
Self-described (Score:1)
I'm all for cancer research. Personally, I'd rather we research how to keep people healthy, rather than fighting disease when it's too late. So little money and doctor training goes into nutrition.
Then there's the issue of public funding for private profits. Amazing how this public funding goes into the ways of fighting cancer that
End the free subsidies (Score:1)
This research is going to lead toward a product which will be sold for money. It will not be free.
Therefore, government is giving industry a giant tax break here by funding its research for it.
No more: let industry pay for its own research.
And since this research is very far from any kind of application, the best way to stop cancers is to reduce population and therefore pollution.
Is research Amendment-worthy? (Score:2)
From looking at everyone's reaction to this, I wonder if maybe people might support a constitutional amendment to make funding research hospitals become one of the government's powers/responsibilities.
Curing cancer, and many other health-related things, e.g. preventing spread of bird flu, are popular and people generally want that. Unfortunately, the constitution doesn't (at least not anywhere I can find) authorize the government to work on that.
We could try hacks like calling it "interstate commerce" or
Likely false (Score:2)
Remember, it's always easier to sell "hopelessness", it's human nature.
Tales from the Washington blob (Score:2)
Whining about layoffs! (Score:2)
Congress is a waste land when it comes to anyone doing their budgeting job and brain dead federal judges have taken control to stop any cuts or even fiscal responsibility at all at the federal level.
The fiscal collapse of the US federal government is going to be epic and a disaster for the poor and the middle class.
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Right... and Trump's tax cut in 2017 contributed massively. And the one he wants will bloat it beyond belief. Meanwhile, Tesla made $2B last year in the US... and paid ZERO in taxes.
That's not how layoffs work (Score:2)
Who gets laid off doesn't come from Washington. That's a middle management decision. They are simply given a directive to reduce their headcount by a certain number or percentage. It's the middle managers who hand out the proverbial pink slips. Given that, clearly they had the choice to make. If they were rational people, then the decision hinged on which research would be the most beneficial. That may or may not be the case in this instance. On the surface, it sounds promising but so does a lot of o