4 ms·
I thought I remembered that the Public Health Service intentionally infected people in order to see what would happen, but Wikipedia seems to say that they inte
by schoen 9y ago
I thought I remembered that the Public Health Service intentionally infected people in order to see what would happen, but Wikipedia seems to say that they intentionally withheld treatment from people who were already infected and deceived them about this, rather than causing the infections themselves (although some of the study subjects spread the disease to other people during the course of the study, which were new infections that could have been prevented by treatment).
- mjevans 9y agoI believe a modern design for this study would compare different kinds of treatment (but not the elimination of treatment... yikes).
- goialoq 9y agoModern policy for medical research is that everyone gets a best available known treatment, and some people also get an experimental unknown treatment.
- incompatible 9y agoThere must be cases where this isn't practical. E.g., if the normal treatment for greyscale is to cut off the arm before it spreads, how could you try any alternative treatment?
- YawningAngel 9y agoIt isn't, and the answer is "you can't get good data". A good example would be immunotherapy for cancers, which has to be tested alongside treatments with adverse impact on immune function