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> For decades, there has been a near complete effective block on medical research for certain classes of drugs. In the US. One wonders why such a study wasn't
by tome 9y ago
> For decades, there has been a near complete effective block on medical research for certain classes of drugs.
In the US. One wonders why such a study wasn't carried out in a less puritan country.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoAs a world power and leader of most democratic nations(at the time), sentiments and legislation started in America generally spread to most other nations under its influence.
- cnp 9y agoThis is quickly changing.
- mistermann 9y agoChina doesn't seem too keen on drugs either.
- QAPereo 9y agoToo true, they’ve been trying to crack down on Ketamine, never mind that it’s medically critical as a field anesthetic!
- metalliqaz 9y agoIt's because the real reason that testing these drugs is illegal isn't USA puritan values/laws. It's because they aren't patented. The synthetic opioids that drug companies are dumping on the population these days are many times more dangerous, but they make a profit for big companies, so they are legal. Powerful drug companies influence research worldwide. They want no competition from drugs that would be generic from day one. edit: missing words
- PeterisP 9y agoThis is a big issue. Clinical studies to get a chemical approved for therapeutical use are very expensive, and since most of the chemicals were first explored a long time ago, they can't be patented anymore, so no pharmaceutical company would fund the studies since they won't be able to be the sole provider of that drug (at a premium cost), and public funding for clinical studies is quite low.
- metalliqaz 9y agoI guess that leaves academia?
- PeterisP 9y agoNo, it does not. "Academia" generally means studies funded by public grants (which, as I said above, very rarely would cover drug approval studies) and in some cases academia might implement studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies, but they're not really an independent source of funding for research, at least not in expensive/labor intensive fields like medicine. In fields where solid research can't be done by a single part-time person (e.g. a teaching professor), research happens only to the extent and in the direction where there's available funding. Even putting a couple grad students on a project for a year (i.e., a very small project) requires external funding, much less the extensive studies needed to prove that a particular chemical is safe for human use and has a therapeutic effect.
- refurb 9y agoThere is nothing stopping them from making a patentable analogue. Happens a lot right now.
- joecool1029 9y agoWell, except for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
- pizza 9y agoiirc the united nations ratified american drug laws in the 60s/70s
- refurb 9y agoSome of it has to do with the history of psychedelics. At least in the US, the 1960's were rife with "psychedelics cure everything!" and they were pretty broadly used in the psychiatrist community. What happened was that a lot of the promise of them didn't pan out. Then the laws changed and it made it much harder to do research. So in essence, it's not just one reason why psychedelic research pretty much disappeared. Unmet expectations, lack of funding and stringent laws all contributed to it.
- beagle3 9y agoIt pretty much is one reason. Neural networks also fell out of favor in the AI winter, for similar reasons, but people could still experiment (and did) so we now have an NN renaissance.
- refurb 9y agoPeople could still experiment with schedule 1 drugs. Sure it's a lot of paperwork, but it can be done, in fact this MAPS study proves it!