4 ms·

America did a lot of science to produce a nuclear weapon quite quickly once given the resources to do so.

• hannob 7y ago
  It didn't involve clinical trials on humans. That's the one thing that takes time in medicine and can't be optimized away. You can't do medicine without clinical trials.
  • jefftk 7y ago
    You can speed up clinical trials by running larger ones at earlier stages. This risks more deaths from bad medicines, which may still be worth it in a pandemic.
    • jfk13 7y ago
      Though the people dying (or losing their friends and families) from the bad medicines might not see it that way.
      • bluGill 7y ago
        When people are dying in mass numbers from not being in the trail though...
    • WaltPurvis 7y ago
      Large clinical trials require large numbers of patients, which thankfully we don't have, and also what we're trying to avoid.
      • jefftk 7y ago
        If things get bad enough that this is worth the risk, we will have large numbers of patients
  • xyzzyz 7y ago
    Human trials cannot be optimized away, but they sure can be optimized. For example, you can do away of IRB reviews, which require lots of effort on the side of researchers, take lots of time and heavily restrict what researchers can do, but which ultimately aren't necessary to run a human trials. Of course, IRB reviews have their purpose, and doing away with them altogether in normal times is most likely a non-starter, but in emergency pandemic time having drug earlier might justify lots of risk of harm to trial subjects.