Reply to 14-year-old inventor from California named ‘America’s Top Young Scientist’

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is this really posited to treat a middle ear infection? So the ultraviolet light is supposed to penetrate the thickened opaque eardrum?

Otitis media is essentially a middle ear abscess. Even if the UV light did sufficiently penetrate the eardrum, it's only going to hit the half millimeter of pus and bacteria right next to it.

This proposed treatment doesn't make any sense. Are people just humoring her or something?[/quote]

Not many medical treatments are 100%. 20% of 100 million is still 20 million treatments. let's stop all research and innovations since they do not work 100% of the time and see how much progress we make in medicine.[/quote]

No, you don't understand. That's 20% reduction on a DIFFERENT MODEL. She was looking at a Petri dish and then a light shining through a broth-filled test tube -- a light that hits a "nutrient broth" in the test tube all around it. That's entirely different from shining a light at a tiny opacified window into just one corner of a ball of thick pus.

So she got at most a decrease of a "significant amount" of bacteria in 20% of a different setup which was much more ideal and doesn't really represent a middle ear infection at all. Clinically significant? Probably not -- and we know what happens when you do just enough treatment to wipe out some of the bacteria, not all of them. That's where antibiotic resistance comes from, and hey, now let's introduce UV light resistance? No.

Look, it's great she is getting support and recognition, but you are literally never going to see this as an actual medical treatment, because it's ridiculous as an idea. But maybe otitis externa (swimmer's ear)? It's just that treating OE doesn't have the sexy numbers or the promise of preventing hearing loss, but it might be a goal she could actually reach. However, that 20% is worrisome -- undertreatment of bacterial infections can be as bad as not treating at all. [/quote]

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