From new vaccines to fight malaria to new advancements in cancer treatments, and from a universal flu vaccine to the James Webb Space Telescope — here are "the 10 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2022 from The Week 🌌

The following submission statement was provided by /u/tonymmorley:

From new vaccines to fight malaria to new advancements in cancer treatments, and from a universal flu vaccine to the James Webb Space Telescope — here are "the 10 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2022 from The Week 🌌

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zu4wru/the_10_biggest_scientific_breakthroughs_of_2022/j1h4h7c/

Fusion, JWST, OrganEx, Flu vaccine, DART, AI Art, mRNA malaria vaccine, AI cancer drugs, human-rat hybrids, stem cell clones

So the organex solution will revive dead people, but like a brain dead or vegetative state? Working organs, beating hearts and all? For the purpose of transplant. Interesting.

Great cast this year.

We may be curing cancer in our lifetimes...the entire definition of medicine is changing. What a time to be alive.

I vote human rat hybrids as the winner and new king of the earth

> human-rat hybrid

The what??

Rat people.

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Taste like rat, look like peo-ple.

I generally say nay on the fusion thing, a great mile stone but this is a painfully slow evolution of tech and not a real breakthrough.

I want to make the distinction because fusion IS an incredibly important tech, but publicity as a breakthrough leads people to believe this is much closer than it is.

Basically … when tech news leads people to believe that Tech will save us from GW and not require us to dramatically change our behaviors, well… drives me nuts.

a braindead person has had their brain tissue destroyed. Organex promises to preserve or restore organ function, but its unlikely that you can revive brain tissue.

Its really just an extra effective version of a ventilator - tons of promise, but not going to bring dead people back to life without consequences.

Rats where some cells in their brain are human cells. It will hopefully make studies in rate brains more translatable to humans.

Agreed, the misinformation that is spreading about the fusion milestone is painful. (EDIT: “misinformation” may not be the right term. “Misleading sensationalism” is probably more accurate. Suggestions?

Especially when you learn that all the news was talking about the energy output by the lasers, not the energy input. The lasers have an efficiency of 1%, which means the lasers used 200 megajoules of energy to generate 3 megajoules of fusion energy... which is significantly less impressive the 2 megajoules in for 3 megajoules out to say the least.

Secret of NIHM here we come

Ratatouille here we come

Only way we will appreciate it is if a celebrity discovers it.

Not even trying to be cynical, but I've been becoming increasingly aware of the fact that complacency (the rot) has taken over majority control.

Humans as a whole do not want to be where we could be.

They want a low level hostile environment that they can navigate from their mobile device.

I know this is pretty on the nose knowledge but it seems fundaments reoccur steadily through knowledge and this is where I'm at right now.

Cheers to those who appreciate it.

it's not 'us' that need to change behaviors, it's corporations.

you can either run around the sprinkler trying to stop every drop from hitting the ground or turn off the tap.

Also the fusion announcement is good. It shows it can work, will increase the spending towards getting a usable product.

Hell the design tested was not even that useful for extracting energy even if they got it pulling more 'from the wall'. There are designs that will allow for easy extraction and now they know it's possible.

Researchers also believe it is a significant breakthrough, though. Of course there's still a long way to go in development and viability overall. But this isn't a case of the news just saying some shit to get clicks. Experts are excited about this development, too.

That seems very foolish to risk giving pestilence intelligence.

They also basically cured chronic obesity with this new drug called Mounjaro. It’s amazing.

Rats aren't pestilence, and they're still fundamentally rat brains.

They pulled in better marketing and PR this time around.

Most people who die aren’t candidates for organ donation because their hearts stopped beating and no oxygen got to the organs so they shut down.

Unless they were breaking dead but still had breathing and a heartbeat or they were placed on a ventilator prior to death, they organs are no good.

Using this method, people who die unexpectedly can then be placed on a ventilator and have their hearts made to beat until the organs can be harvested.

Considering how very many people die each year waiting on the transplant list (17 people each day in the US), this is amazing!

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Honestly so much happened in 2022. Good year for science

I would not call it misinformation as over-hype.

Fair. Yeah, maybe misinformation is more intentional. But it’s not just over-hype either. It’s misleading sensationalism.

“Some bioethicists are uneasy about the implications of putting human cells into rats. "It raises the possibility that you're creating an enhanced rat that might have cognitive capacities greater than an ordinary rat," said Julian Savulescu, a bioethicist at the National University of Singapore.”

Oh bioethicists, you have been slowing down the rat man for too long. Long live the real Cheese Heads.

Master Splinter?!

I genuinely don't know why chatGPT isn't at the absolute top of this list

>Fusion

This one was every year for last 30 years and it will be done in less than 20 years, again.

>Humans as a whole do not want to be where we could be.

Which is why I do not give half a fuck for those filthy wetware creatures.

As for myself, this flesh bag of life support for my processing unit is certainly not my final form, will replace this shit ASAP if not for anything else just for security reasons alone makes going synthetic worth it.

I'd guess it's because it's extremely niche even now. It's not legacy tech finally showing signs of life like fusion, and it can't exactly do anything particularly revolutionary, despite being able to a lot of things at a medium-high level(for example, it can code but GitHub copilot already exists, and it's conversational skills are fairly limited). I would be surprised if GPT 4 or at worst 5 don't get massive representation though.

Thank you and merry Christmas