Folding Forum

Hi everyone,

I am a new folder and I joined yesterday.

I was telling someone I know about F@H and they basically said, "So they get people to unnecessarily shorten the lifespan of their hardware, find solutions to diseases, and then sell the solutions which will be marked up and impossible for normal people to afford. Got it."

It really made me think about what happens to all the work that we put in. I tried looking on the site and anywhere I could, but I couldn't find any information about what happens to this research.

So what happens to it? Is it open source? Can anyone access the results for research?

Edit: So I was actually able to find the page about the research papers here, and how they should be mostly available for free: https://foldingathome.org/papers-results/

This does somewhat answer my question, but I still wonder, are the protein models available anywhere for free?

They are working on getting those hosted up and available freely for other researchers. There are some available already, would have to go search up the links again. Some are listed in a topic that was posted within the last few days.

Hi Joe_H what does "available freely for other researchers" mean? Could you also clarify what "researchers" are there qualifications required for this? I enjoy tinkering with models and it seems a tad unfair if I decided to donate my hardwares time, lifespan, and increase in power bill if I get excluded from the benefits achieved by the community that I was contributing too. Do you know who the best person to reach out to is regarding this?

They have a new section on github for corona virus
https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/coronavirus

Stanford is not-for-profit so the research is published. If a Pharma then uses it to create medicine they get to charge for it.

Is it better that there are cures or not?

In the US where apparently socialism is a terrifying prospect, sick people have to pay for drugs; in sensible democratic socialist countries where medicine is free at the point of use, these cures help everyone.

The workunits give scientists a very clear picture of what happens when proteins misfold or when molecules interact. For example, it's very helpful to see how viruses (including this recent one) interact on the surface of a healthy cell, or how existing anti-viral drugs connect with them. The workunits generate a statistical map of how all interactions are likely to go, which is extremely helpful when you're trying to design a new antiviral drug or see if existing drugs will work in the way you hope. The computer simulations give a lot of useful detail that is extremely difficult to capture in other ways (such as through x-ray crystallography) and this research is critical for higher-level drug design projects.

The papers are sometimes temporarily restricted due to the rules of the paper in which they are published, but they are frequently open and available through the website or via Google Scholar. Last I checked, the research projects are often many gigabytes in size and that's difficult to share, but they should be available as well. Folding@home is very collaborative and open at every level.

HaloJones wrote:Stanford is not-for-profit so the research is published. If a Pharma then uses it to create medicine they get to charge for it.

Is it better that there are cures or not?

In the US where apparently socialism is a terrifying prospect, sick people have to pay for drugs; in sensible democratic socialist countries where medicine is free at the point of use, these cures help everyone.

I have never really understood the fear of socialism in the U.S. there are many policies that are socialist in nature that lots of people rely on as they are helpful. Personally I know the healthcare system needs an entire overhaul. In regards to is it better that there are cures or not a cures existence is irrelevant if the population who needs it gets priced out or literally has to ruin their economic life in order to obtain it (imo). This might not be a very popular view and who knows it could change at some point but for me I do not see the point in further enhancing major pharma companies bottom lines.

For better or worse, F@H data is public domain. I would have preferred a license that forced the company to acknowledge our data, but it is completely public domain, no license at all.

An animation has been posted.
https://twitter.com/drGregBowman/status ... 92640?s=20

So, to clarify what OP is really asking:
We're not just donating hardware time so that already astronomically rich American pharma companies can get even richer?

HaloJones wrote:In the US where apparently socialism is a terrifying prospect, sick people have to pay for drugs; in sensible democratic socialist countries where medicine is free at the point of use, these cures help everyone.

All very amusing, but you will notice (if you do) that all the leading research and probable cures are coming from the U.S.

ESStor wrote:So, to clarify what OP is really asking:
We're not just donating hardware time so that already astronomically rich American pharma companies can get even richer?

Yes and no.

The data is public domain, freely available to anyone. OTOH, who is already set up to use data to make new drugs?

JimboPalmer wrote:The data is public domain, freely available to anyone. OTOH, who is already set up to use data to make new drugs?

Great question.
Answer: The ones who have invested the money to do so.

As long as the research is available to those who want to cure disease,
and isnt already bought by those who only want to make money on others misery,
Im onboard:)

Thanks for the replies everyone.

So basically what I'm hearing is that if we can find a cure, the simulations are public domain. Also, the papers are, for the most part, free to access.

However, at least for the United States, if a pharmacy company wants to patent a drug made from that data and papers and price gouge for it, they can.

Does that sound right? Is there anyone at FAH that has acknowledged this? Because I honestly don't think I want to fold anymore if that's the case.

Edit: There was some more clarification from another forum and a discord channel I talk in, which should've been clear from the papers and results page, but I did want to get some other heads on it so I can get a more solid answer.

All in all, the FAH project is to further human knowledge in general, and all the information from this project will be made public domain as much as humanly possible. The drugs made are dependent on the country.

So for example, Canada might get a free vaccine for Coronavirus, but in the US it might cost $100,000+ and not be covered fully or at all through health insurance.

I think I was being a bit quick to judge, so I'll keep folding. I guess I could make more efforts to get free healthcare in the US and other issues.