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The other, largely ignored and much, much larger population of martyrs are those who died due to the growing excess of precaution and cost slowing down the deve

The other, largely ignored and much, much larger population of martyrs are those who died due to the growing excess of precaution and cost slowing down the development and use of new medicine. E.g. see: http://fdareview.org/ http://fdareview.org/ The cost of regulatory burdens on medicine in the US has doubled in real terms in the past ten years. http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014_cost_study http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014... Much of that these days is political, driven by bureaucrats in the FDA and elsewhere whose career advancement depends of creating no news. Their every incentive is to suppress progress, because they are rewarded with bigger budgets when there is no new medicine, and punished when anything ever goes wrong and the media happens to seize upon it. No medicine is without risk. Every medical technology is involved in deaths. But successful clinical application saves lives and increases health to a much greater degree. So long as people have choice, they should have the choice to risk themselves in the development of better medicine.

jcadam 11y ago
This ridiculous, almost(?) cowardly aversion to any and all risk is a growing problem with all government agencies (at all levels), not just the FDA.
dikdik 11y ago
Most people do not understand medicine well enough to make an informed choice based off of risk. And as noble as it is to sacrifice yourself for the "greater good", I think it's absurd to place that expectation on the average person. Especially if you are not actively participating in medical research yourself. Most people that are involved in medical research are in the lower classes, I think that's telling about how our society really views medical research. As an anecdote, my aunt told me a few years ago about my uncle (her brother) dying from cancer when I was very young. She said it felt like watching him be tortured. Years later it still upsets her thinking of all the treatments he had to undergo. She thought the doctors viewed him as helping "the greater good" (aka a test subject) instead of focusing on his quality of life. And it is worth noting, she watched a sister and her mother go through the same thing prior to my uncle (as well as another sister after), yet she did not have the same opinion on their treatments.

jcadam 11y ago

This ridiculous, almost(?) cowardly aversion to any and all risk is a growing problem with all government agencies (at all levels), not just the FDA.

dikdik 11y ago

Most people do not understand medicine well enough to make an informed choice based off of risk. And as noble as it is to sacrifice yourself for the "greater good", I think it's absurd to place that expectation on the average person. Especially if you are not actively participating in medical research yourself. Most people that are involved in medical research are in the lower classes, I think that's telling about how our society really views medical research. As an anecdote, my aunt told me a few years ago about my uncle (her brother) dying from cancer when I was very young. She said it felt like watching him be tortured. Years later it still upsets her thinking of all the treatments he had to undergo. She thought the doctors viewed him as helping "the greater good" (aka a test subject) instead of focusing on his quality of life. And it is worth noting, she watched a sister and her mother go through the same thing prior to my uncle (as well as another sister after), yet she did not have the same opinion on their treatments.