Posted on 10/21/2021 12:09:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Standard clinical trials used to test new medicines are slow and cumbersome. The pandemic has shown that a new kind of trial is far quicker, but is it reliable enough?
HUNDREDS of years ago, if you had a pain, a cough or a fever, an apothecary might prescribe you a tincture or – joy – a restorative course of leeches. Thankfully, medicine has come a long way since then. It is by no means perfect, but hospitals, drugs and healthcare have made our days inestimably more comfortable.
Much of this is thanks to that bastion of science, the clinical trial, which tests whether a medicine or treatment is safe and effective. Evidence from such trials is considered the gold standard, and over the years it has helped us sort the quackery from the cures. It might be surprising to hear, then, that a growing number of doctors think the way we test medicines needs an overhaul.
For all their strengths, clinical trials often take years to deliver a verdict. This drawback was exposed during the covid-19 pandemic, when we desperately needed treatments for a new disease. Doctors were forced to use quicker methods of assessment, and at this juncture, it seems they paid off. “We were able to achieve in weeks what would have otherwise taken years,” says epidemiologist Martin Landray at the University of Oxford.
If we can get robust answers about medicines in a faster way than standard clinical trials can, surely we are ethically obliged to do so. Some say yes: helping more people more quickly must be a good thing. Others worry that rushing medicines into use has got us into trouble before. Whether there really are speedier, more reliable ways of doing clinical trials is rapidly becoming one of the most critical questions in medicine.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Somebody please help us.
“… If we can get robust answers about medicines in a faster way than standard clinical trials can, surely we are ethically obliged to do so….”
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I believe it absolutely essential that, in this era of undeclared biological warfare, that there will be times when voluntary double blind “challenge trials” MUST be used when time is of the essence. When COVID-19 came our way was such a time. The FDA and CDC were completely not up to the task. They had a peacetime mindset when a wartime mindset was needed.
We must not allow them to fail us NEXT TIME. And there will be a next time.
Now, more than ever, avoid doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals. Lose weight, stop smoking, drinking and fast foods. Walk 15 miles a week or the equivalent in cardio exercise. These people are out to kill us.
More smoke and mirrors.
This is an outright fabrication.
The EUCs were granted, in part, because there wasn't the usual 2-10 year clinical trial period AND because of the hysteria. The short term trials were just that...trials that ran for a few week under the usual data collection protocols.
The Vaccine Efficacy(VE) metrics of 90% or so were qualified (but that wasn't highlighted in the press releases)... they were effectively "in-time and in-sample" VEs. There was "no time" to do an out-of-time VE calculation because....well...people wanted a shot.
Now we see that -surprise - VE decays over time for these shots, We also see side effects - maybe due to the messenger RNA platform - and the impacts across multiple seasons.
HOWEVER...if this was a clinical trial, all this data would be collected in a controlled, well-governed, trusted, and heterogenous manner where the TRUTH would be clear. THIS (among other things) is the benefit of long-run clinical trials.
Instead (by design?), because these observations are not sysmatically collected or are being collected by Citizen Clinicians, it exposes the process to name-calling, character assasination, smearing and so on.
Grape juice that ferments becomes wine. Take away fermentation, and you get grape juice. And that's ok...I like grape juice. But don't lie to me and say it's wine.
I'll say it again....if people in the heightened risk zone were fully informed and took the shots, that's perfectly legit and it speaks to individual utility maximization. But you can't have that, and turn around and call people who don't take the shots names and "antivaxxers."
Unless, of course, this isn't about health...
;D
Theranos 2.0?
So timely!
” when we desperately needed treatments for a new disease.”
We had treatments in hand within a few weeks...Hydroxychloroquine, zinc, Quercetin, and others. Later, we were given the word on ivermectin.
The greatest failing of the Trump administration in all this was NOT putting the same effort behind TREATEMENTS and THERAPEUTICS as they placed on vaccines; vaccines which have turned out to be far less efficacious than we were told, and far more genetic experimentation than we were led to believe.
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