Comment by snapcaster 3 days ago
Yeah putting myself in the shoes of someone with this disease or a loved one with this disease I would be so incredibly angry that we weren't allowed to try something when the alternative is certain death
Oh sick, so every time my company faces an economic downturn, I can shift huge amounts of workers to a program designed to sell unfinished drugs at cost! Like, it doesn’t even have to be viable, just start selling saline with coloring or something.
Unless it does have to be somewhat viable, which is… regulation.
I'm not against regulation in principle. In this case, full disclosure of exactly what's in the drug should definitely be required. People's doctors can make informed decisions after that.
Restricting this to patients who are otherwise out of options is probably also a good idea. Pancreatic cancer would certainly qualify.
I think you could mitigate some of the problems by making the drug company pay for the treatment before approval.
It's the prisoner's dilemma. Or more succinctly:
Take something and possibly live, or take nothing and certainly die.
Yeah this is more like a Pascalian Gamble [1]. If you try nothing, then you are assured to die as God wanted. If you try something, then you might live, but then God hates you.
It is like Pascal's Wager but has nothing to do with "what God wanted" or "God hating you"... It's more "if it doesn't work the outcome is the same anyway" (eternal oblivion in Pascal's case, certain death in this case), therefore why not give it a shot in case it does work.
There is a lot of money to be made selling snake oil to the desperate, so we definitely want regulation…