Posted on 07/18/2017 1:31:15 PM PDT by kathsua
The efforts of British medical personnel to prevent Charlie Gard from receiving experimental treatment implies they don't understand how important participating in medical research is. All medical treatments begin as experiments. Someone had to be the first to be treated for rabies. Someone had to be the first to receive a heart transplant. Sixty years ago my grandfather had experimental treatment for skin cancer on his face that didn't work as expected because, according to my dad, The doctor applied the radiation for too long. Decades later doctors used the knowledge they gained from treating my grandfather and others to successfully treat my father and his brother as well as myself for facial skin cancers.
Sometimes treatment developed for one malady can be used to treat another. American entertainer Jerry Lewis helped raise millions to develop treatments for muscular dystrophy. Doctor used one of those treatments to save Lewis from a potentially fatal heart problem.
We cannot tell in advance if Charlie Gard will benefit from experimental treatment. If he does not his parents will know that their son's life served a purpose because knowledge gained from treating their son will eventually benefit the lives of other children just like knowledge from efforts to treat my grandfather's skin cancer benefited his sons and grandson.
I don’t know but the Great Ormond Street Hospital may not like being upstaged by the Yanks.
Brits are too busy denouncing Charlie’s parents for wanting to use him as a guinea pig to comprehend medical research. (Maybe not all Brits but from what I’ve seen, far too many.)
IMHO, it’s not that they (British health establishment) don’t think the procedure could work — they fear that it might work. (It’s expensive & socialized health care requires rationing — and banning expensive new treatments. That’s the only way budgets can be balanced.)
British medical research budget
“In 2015/16 the MRC’s gross research expenditure, funded by our BIS budgetary allocation and contributions from other bodies, was £927.8m compared to £771.8m in 2014/15. “
https://www.mrc.ac.uk/about/what-we-do/spending-accountability/facts/
The US federal government:
“Federal agencies invested a total of $35.9 billion, with the National Institutes of Health accounting for $29.6 billion”
https://www.researchamerica.org/sites/default/files/2016US_Invest_R%26D_report.pdf
Adding in private and university research spending, and the 2015 total was $158.7 billion
The UK’s research spending is relatively insignificant.
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