Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 04/15/2008 7:56:10 PM PDT by jazusamo
Sue. It's for a good cause for a change.
>> helping the fight against global warming.
How many are willing to stand back for a moment, a short moment, and question their personal investment in the ‘crusade’ of Global Warming?
As the Earth tumbles in orbit round the inferno that provides its life, we humans indulge ourselves with the illusion of supremacy that aims to control and conquer the behavior of a system that will readily forget its inhabitants.
It’s embarrassing.
Terminally ill people can’t try experimental drugs?”
even addictive pain killers are illegal.
Yes! As Rush said yesterday, “There is nothing man can do to alter any climate event”. In my own words, global garming is a dream based on mankind’s presumptuous arrogance.
Sowell is a national treasure!
Yes, they can. But the pharmaceutical companies take a major risk, both ethically and in terms of liability, in offering them. With any proposed drug first a toxicity study must be done on animals, and only then might an efficacy/dosage testing even be considered for human patients. You don't have a drug at this point, you only have a theory. And there are a lot of drugs that can cure one condition and kill you with another.Even if the drugs have been used for years in Europe without any ill effects, that cuts no ice with the FDA. Even patients stricken with potentially fatal diseases are not allowed to buy the drugs until after many years of testing -- if the patients live that long. Terminally ill people can't try experimental drugs?Shouldn't they be the ones to decide that?
3 posted on April 15, 2008 11:03:31 PM EDT by secretagent
It isn't just that a terminal patient is going to die anyway, the ethical issue is quality of what remains of that life. The chances of making things worse are greater than the chances of a "miracle" cure.
There is another form of such testing, "off-label" indications for existing drugs. There at least the toxicity is nailed down and one has an idea of what dosages will produce what side effects. But efficacy for a new indication - a different disease - is not known at this point. It's still risky. My guess is that most of the testing of drugs on terminal patients (in the U.S.) takes this form.
You're defining the FDA line, not necessarily giving your own opinion - but that is a heavy abuse of the word "risk." If you're going to be crucified tomorrow, the term "risk" has no meaning today.In the context we're speaking of, the concept of risk is a red herring.even addictive pain killers are illegal.23 posted on April 16, 2008 7:43:42 AM EDT by tired1
Desperate ills are by desperate measures cured. Or not at all. - Shakespeare
BTTT
Sowell/Stossel 2008
“Sowell/Stossel 2008”
Yes.
ping
global warming is a dream based on mankind’s presumptuous arrogance
Yes and yes! I've been thinking this way for a while. It was all summed up nicely for me yesterday when I saw the logo on a sign for greenie propaganda in my work cafeteria. It was a little figure of the earth and written over top of it was, "The Future Is In Our Hands". Breathtaking arrogance. And they probably have no idea.
marinamuffy
I can concur with you on CFL’s. I dropped one into my kids toybox and it broke. I cleaned it up and cut myself in the process as a sliver of glass impaed itself into my thumb. I’m still alive as are my kids.
My utility company set these instructions with my last bill. Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Require Special Clean-up
If you break a CFL
1 - Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
2 - Wearing disposable rubber gloves carefully scoop up the fragments, powder with stiff paper or cardboard, and place them in a sealed plastic bag. On a rug, use sticky tape to pick up small pieces and powder.
3 - Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or wet wipes and place in a plastic bag.
4 - Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces, If vacuuming is needed on a rug after all visible materials are removed, vacuum only the area where the bulb was broken. Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the vacuum debris in two sealed bags.
5 - Place all cleanup materials and rubber gloves in a double plastic bag and seal tightly. Wash hands.
6 - If possible, dispose of plastic bag at a recycling site. Otherwise, place it in an outside garbage container.
Now let me pose this question. Are you qualified to certify that the area is free of containments?
Can you see this day coming?
Pay a specially trained and registered specialist to test the area before declaring the area once again inhabitable. If not certified inhabitable then pay a specially trained clean-up technician to clean the area of all containments before paying the inspector to re-inspect.
The whole thing is ridiculous, isn’t it? Just as ridiculous as wanting to do away with the incandescent bulb in the first place.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Let me try this again. I am attempting to answer a perfectly reasonable question with those facts I have at hand. The question was "can terminal patients try experimental drugs?" The answer is a qualified "yes." The two most common ways a patient can try an unapproved drug are (1) short-cutting the development pipeline for a drug approved for nothing yet, and (2) trying a drug approved for another indication. These are different in terms of risk of a negative outcome.
Case 1 - there is, for roughly the first third of a drug's developmental pipeline, no chance for a positive outcome. None. You can't even make medicinal amounts (or purities) of whatever it is; the process science isn't in place yet. During the second third the issue is toxicity, during the third, efficacy and unexpected complications that appear within a large enough sample population. That's how drug research is done. If the patient wishes to short-circuit that process his or her best shot is as far along as possible. This can be done, but understand that there are severe ethical complications for a researcher to give someone something that causes an immediate, horrible death by convulsions and anaphylactic shock and simply blow it off with "oh, he or she was going to die anyway." The patient signing a release does not address those issues. One may find researchers willing to do that. Most won't.
Case 2 - different matter. Here we have a drug that can be produced in medicinal amounts and purities. We have a fair idea of its mechanism and suspect that it might translate to another indication. There is actually quite a bit of off-label experimentation done, some of it quite successfully. (Some interesting results in Alzheimers have been reported by spinal injections of the rheumatoid arthritis drug Etanercept, for example).
I am not personally advocating either of these nor am I recommending against them - I have no professional standing to do either one. I am stating what is happening in the field. If you want to twist that into an accusation of parroting an FDA line, you're welcome to do so.
You think more like me than anybody I’ve met, heard or read.
I am not personally advocating either of these nor am I recommending against them - I have no professional standing to do either one. I am stating what is happening in the field. If you want to twist that into an accusation of parroting an FDA line, you're welcome to do so.
Sorry if I wasn't clear; the above was what I intended - that I didn't take you to necessarily be advocating, but merely stating what is.A thousand pardons for any adverse effect I might have had on your blood pressure.
Thanks, I guess? :)
;-)
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