4 ms·

It's a safe first step. These patients are guaranteed to die very soon without a miracle, so the risk of causing a new cancer doesn't matter.

by ebg13 7y ago

cannonedhamster 7y ago
Statistically likely, not guaranteed. I'm already statistically likely to be dead and resistant to chemo but so far so good. The patients know the risk though and decades is dramatically longer a time frame than they likely have. Hopefully this works wonders and can be pushed to other types of cancers.
- achievingApathy 7y ago
  Wouldn't accepting only those that had such advanced cancers though skew any results? I'm very much in favor of these individuals getting any and all help they can as soon as possible but I want to remain optimistic about the validity of the results. (I can't tell if you meant to imply that you are in remission or going through chemo now).
Symmetry 7y ago
I'm sort of glad we've changed our approach. Back in the early days of gene therapy in the 90s in one of the first attempts at curing OTC[1] the medical ethics board decided that the trial could only be conducted on people with a non-lethal version of the disease. It was thought that people whose only alternative to the treatment was death wouldn't be able to say no and thus couldn't give the required consent. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_def...
- ebg13 7y ago
  > thus couldn't give the required consent While they weren't technically wrong, holy throwing the baby out with the bathwater, batman. This is the problem with single-issue voting. I wonder if they have logicians on these panels. "So you want to take a person who will live...and maybe make them die...because you don't want to test on someone who will die?"
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    Well, yeah, I think that was a very bad call. But from the hospital's perspective nobody was going to blame them if some children died of a currently incurable disease. But people might very well blame them if there was a problem with the treatment. And there was a problem with the treatment, so maybe it was selfishly good for them that they had this procedure.

It's a safe first step. These patients are guaranteed to die very soon without a miracle, so the risk of causing a new cancer doesn't matter.

by ebg13 7y ago

It's a safe first step. These patients are guaranteed to die very soon without a miracle, so the risk of causing a new cancer doesn't matter.

cannonedhamster 7y ago

Statistically likely, not guaranteed. I'm already statistically likely to be dead and resistant to chemo but so far so good. The patients know the risk though and decades is dramatically longer a time frame than they likely have. Hopefully this works wonders and can be pushed to other types of cancers.

achievingApathy 7y ago
Wouldn't accepting only those that had such advanced cancers though skew any results? I'm very much in favor of these individuals getting any and all help they can as soon as possible but I want to remain optimistic about the validity of the results. (I can't tell if you meant to imply that you are in remission or going through chemo now).

Symmetry 7y ago

I'm sort of glad we've changed our approach. Back in the early days of gene therapy in the 90s in one of the first attempts at curing OTC[1] the medical ethics board decided that the trial could only be conducted on people with a non-lethal version of the disease. It was thought that people whose only alternative to the treatment was death wouldn't be able to say no and thus couldn't give the required consent. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_def...

ebg13 7y ago
> thus couldn't give the required consent While they weren't technically wrong, holy throwing the baby out with the bathwater, batman. This is the problem with single-issue voting. I wonder if they have logicians on these panels. "So you want to take a person who will live...and maybe make them die...because you don't want to test on someone who will die?"
- Symmetry 7y ago
  Well, yeah, I think that was a very bad call. But from the hospital's perspective nobody was going to blame them if some children died of a currently incurable disease. But people might very well blame them if there was a problem with the treatment. And there was a problem with the treatment, so maybe it was selfishly good for them that they had this procedure.