>Our current paradigm is optimized to avoid injuring humans at all costs, including to the extent that it diminishes the chance of success. I would characteriz

>Our current paradigm is optimized to avoid injuring humans at all costs, including to the extent that it diminishes the chance of success. I would characterize it as more avoiding the liability of injury to humans than avoiding injury overall (edit: and by liability i'm not just talking legal liability, there are also emotional consequences a person would experience if someone dies or is gravely injured as part of their medical research). A family member died of cancer this year. Nobody is liable for her 'injury' because there's no evidence it wasn't a natural occurrence and standard of care was followed in her treatment. However, a number of plausibly beneficial alternatives or adjuncts to that standard were in phase 3 trials that either her doctor flat out refused to consider or that she was ineligible for...not due to concerns of clinical efficacy of the treatment, but due to prior treatments that could have smeared the signal in the results (this is particularly true for immunotherapy trials). It's a medical version of the trolly problem and from what I can see and definitely in our experience doctors choose to ride the rails they were set on. I don't blame them either. With the current climate in medicine a wrong move could end their career and possibly prevent them from helping those in the future. It's an extremely tricky situation and I empathize with those that are faced with these dilemmas every day at the office. I just don't buy the story that changing our current approach is somehow de-prioritizing injury avoidance.