4 ms·
Interesting ethics of using people as the null hypothesis population knowing they are then condemned to death
by AtomicOrbital 7y ago
Interesting ethics of using people as the null hypothesis population knowing they are then condemned to death
- loeg 7y agoYou give the control arm the current best standard of care until and unless it becomes statistically obvious that your test arm is better and then ethically you're supposed to switch everyone to the drug at that point. It's not like the control group is denied the best care we know how to provide, just to accommodate experimentation.
- knzhou 7y agoThis is an objection that could be raised against literally any clinical trial. If we knew that a treatment was effective and safe, it would indeed be immoral to withhold it from people. But we don't know that. Finding that out is the whole point of having trials!
- samatman 7y agoThe alternative is to treat everyone as the null hypothesis population, or administer the treatment to everyone and then be unable to determine if it's effective. Both of these are strictly worse, since neither of them can result in the discovery of an effective treatment.
- belltaco 7y agoWhat if the treatment causes adverse effects? That way the control population are better off.
- empath75 7y agoThey might be more likely to die if you give them the wrong medicine.