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The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is

by j7ake 9y ago

The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is not to be overly confident with what you think a chemical can do to your body, even if it is approved by the FDA.

lotsofpulp 9y ago
Imperfect information and lack of tools/knowledge to perform adequate analysis, and perhaps selfish motivations might have caused Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, but the scientific process did not. Unless you can pinpoint all the causal factors of a relationship, there is no other option I have heard of other than the scientific process, i.e. testing, calculating, re-testing, calculating, retesting...etc that could provide us with knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. And obviously, it will be wrong sometimes, hence the need to re-test, but there is no better option. If anything, we need more actual scientific process, meaning using our newfound computing capabilities to open up data so that all experiments can be vetted for accuracy and differing populations tested, etc.
- j7ake 9y ago
  I agree there is no better option but that is not sufficient to no longer doubt the state of the art knowledge of biomedicine or effects of chemical on the body.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    The scientific process is all about doubting what you "know"...obviously to be pragmatic, it's useful to assume certain things such as gravity, time, that a chemical reaction yesterday will do the same today under the same conditions, etc. But the whole purpose of testing and retesting (which is the scientific process) is because you're always doubting. That's why data should be free, in order to let this testing happen. Of course we have limited resources to do testing, so there must be some triage involved somehow, but that has nothing to do with the scientific process.
dekhn 9y ago
Note that thalidomide is still given as a drug, because it is phenomenally effective. I don't think that the medical testing system when thalidomide was approved necessarily had the sophistication to make the right determination.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The US response to the thalidomide crisis was largely to give the FDA increased power to regulate drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauver_Harris_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauver_Harris_Amendment This is after the FDA blocked approval of thalidomide, pointing to insufficient testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
  - dekhn 9y ago
    the FDA approved thalidomide in 1998: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/98/020785s000_ThalidomideTOC.cfm https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/98/020785... In refusing to approve thalidomide earlier, many thousands of patients died horribly agonizing deaths. Thalidomide was actually tested quite intensively however the company that did it "lost" the records that showed harm to pregnant women. The whole story is far more complicated, and involves chiral mixtures, pregnancy tests, and a lot more subtleties that belie the simple narrative.

by j7ake 9y ago

lotsofpulp 9y ago

Imperfect information and lack of tools/knowledge to perform adequate analysis, and perhaps selfish motivations might have caused Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, but the scientific process did not. Unless you can pinpoint all the causal factors of a relationship, there is no other option I have heard of other than the scientific process, i.e. testing, calculating, re-testing, calculating, retesting...etc that could provide us with knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. And obviously, it will be wrong sometimes, hence the need to re-test, but there is no better option. If anything, we need more actual scientific process, meaning using our newfound computing capabilities to open up data so that all experiments can be vetted for accuracy and differing populations tested, etc.

j7ake 9y ago
I agree there is no better option but that is not sufficient to no longer doubt the state of the art knowledge of biomedicine or effects of chemical on the body.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  The scientific process is all about doubting what you "know"...obviously to be pragmatic, it's useful to assume certain things such as gravity, time, that a chemical reaction yesterday will do the same today under the same conditions, etc. But the whole purpose of testing and retesting (which is the scientific process) is because you're always doubting. That's why data should be free, in order to let this testing happen. Of course we have limited resources to do testing, so there must be some triage involved somehow, but that has nothing to do with the scientific process.

dekhn 9y ago

Note that thalidomide is still given as a drug, because it is phenomenally effective. I don't think that the medical testing system when thalidomide was approved necessarily had the sophistication to make the right determination.

maxerickson 9y ago
The US response to the thalidomide crisis was largely to give the FDA increased power to regulate drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauver_Harris_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauver_Harris_Amendment This is after the FDA blocked approval of thalidomide, pointing to insufficient testing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
- dekhn 9y ago
  the FDA approved thalidomide in 1998: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/98/020785s000_ThalidomideTOC.cfm https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/98/020785... In refusing to approve thalidomide earlier, many thousands of patients died horribly agonizing deaths. Thalidomide was actually tested quite intensively however the company that did it "lost" the records that showed harm to pregnant women. The whole story is far more complicated, and involves chiral mixtures, pregnancy tests, and a lot more subtleties that belie the simple narrative.