Some Ebola Patients Should Get Placebo in Drug Tests: FDA

Bloomberg ^ | November 5, 2014

[Diogenesis]

Some Ebola Patients Should Get Placebo in Drug Tests: FDA
"Edward Cox, director of the FDA’s Office of Antimicrobial Products,
said Wednesday that some patients with Ebola need
to forgo potentially life-saving treatments so researchers
can see how they fare compared to those who receive the
experimental drugs .... Cox noted that randomised studies
would be "challenging," but they are necessary ..."

[OKSooner]

He's channeling Sebelius.

"Some live, some gotta die."

Also he's an @$$hole.

[Darksheare]

Josef Mengele in charge of the FDA?

[Smokin' Joe]

One breast cancer drug that was in a double blind study had early results were so promising, at least for what it was intended, that they came to the conclusion that it was unethical to continue with a placebo as part of the trials.

Some of science has become a process of splitting statistical hairs to the degree that the inherently obvious is not allowed for in the construction of studies.

Given a large base of people who have not received the drugs or vaccines already, even with questions about the record keeping, anything which gives patients a significant edge should be readily obvious, improving survival rates by a readily recognizable factor.

[Smokin' Joe]

How many have recovered without experimental treatment? Of those who survive almost all had no treatment other than palliative - fluids and nutrition.

There's your control group. You already have it. No need to imperil more people.

[petro45acp]

Hmmmmm

Double blind testing on a high rate terminal disease.....

That seems more a regulatory requirement, less a research one.

Maybe if the FDA got their noses out of research, there’d be more cures out there...

KYPD

[Politicalkiddo]

I say we give the head of the CDC Ebola and then let him try the Placebo. It’s so easy to use others as test subjects for deadly diseases when your life is not on the line.

[CdMGuy]

Plain and simple, this guy is a POS of the first order who should have been fired one nanosecond after making that statement.

[Politicalkiddo]

And the head of the FDA head, as well.

[BuffaloJack]

Is this what our Ebola exposed troops are for?

[AndyJackson]

There is a legitimate scientific question about whether a particular drug is effective against ebola vs all the other things modern medicine can do to support life so that the patient has a chance of recovering without the drug. But in the first place not against a placebo. And in the second place given that you cannot make the drug available to everyone at the outset anyway, there are plenty of controls and the moral thing to do is to provide all the care that medicical science can provide to every patient who walks in the door.

We are not testing cures for warts or hangovers.

[bgill]

You know damn well, this is meant for the soldiers and it was ALWAYS Obama’s intention when he sent them.

Bingo.

[DannyTN]

A placebo as a control seems inappropriate in a life or death illness like Ebola.

Let patients who got no medicine be the control group.

[musicman]

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[Arthur McGowan]

I remember a scene in “The Story of Louis Pasteur,” where some doctors want to withhold Pasteur’s treatment from a war full of kids with some disease, “as a control.” Pasteur says all the children dying all over the country are the “control,” and goes ahead and gives all the children his treatment.

[null and void]

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your......

(Since all records of obama's past were lost in a tragic boating accident and fire, no one can be certain that the guy in the red circle isn't him...)

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[GeronL]

70-90% will die but hey, gotta make an omelet

[WildHighlander57]

This reply is to Edward Cox :

Bravo Sierra!

Give everyone the meds.

If it works, it works.

No need to see if the “placebo effect” works in the face of a 70% mortality rate disease.

What happened to your oath:

First, do no harm

??

[WildHighlander57]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3223586/posts?page=37#37

See post #37.

70% mortality rate.

No time for olacebos; that % rate is horrendous.

Medic’s Oath says:

First, do no harm.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[a fool in paradise]

Recall how the medical community took the approach that lives were expendable during Obama’s virus crisis.