5 ms·

>Problem is, there is no proof at all that aducanumab leads to any kind of improvement Nothing you have said has any bearing on whether someone who is currentl

>Problem is, there is no proof at all that aducanumab leads to any kind of improvement Nothing you have said has any bearing on whether someone who is currently dying of Alzheimers should be allowed to try it if they or their doctors or family choose. "False hope" is not the most important thing at stake here, not by a long shot.

mcguire 5y ago
Committing fraud against the most desperate, vulnerable people in the country is universally regarded as unethical.
- hackinthebochs 5y ago
  But there is no fraud. As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, the drug claims to remove plaque, not to treat Alzheimers. I personally don't have the hubris to think I should stand in the way of someone willing to try the drug on their loved one who is suffering from Alzheimers.
  - bingidingi 5y ago
    This is an incredibly expensive treatment meant for incredibly desperate people. If you were in a situation where a parent had alzheimers it would be hard not to feel guilty if you didn't try it, no matter the price. To approve the drug despite the lack of efficacy is unethical, especially considering there are potentially severe side effects like brain swelling.
paulpauper 5y ago
except that financial resources are finite . Without certain standards, costs would spiral out of control more than they already have.
- hackinthebochs 5y ago
  I am sympathetic to the argument that expensive treatments socialized medicine pays for should be limited to those proven effective. What I am against are blanket restrictions presumably for people's own good, or to prevent "Big Pharma" from profiting or whatever bugaboo it is.
  - peytn 5y ago
    We can create combinatorially many drugs. There are labs that can screen hundreds of thousands of molecules a day. So approving drugs that aren’t proven effective for a disease might reasonably lead to few or no drugs that are effective because it’s so easy and relatively cheap to stuff a development pipeline with promising drugs if you don’t need to worry about whether they work at the disease stage due to crowding out effective drugs.

mcguire 5y ago

Committing fraud against the most desperate, vulnerable people in the country is universally regarded as unethical.

hackinthebochs 5y ago
But there is no fraud. As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, the drug claims to remove plaque, not to treat Alzheimers. I personally don't have the hubris to think I should stand in the way of someone willing to try the drug on their loved one who is suffering from Alzheimers.
- bingidingi 5y ago
  This is an incredibly expensive treatment meant for incredibly desperate people. If you were in a situation where a parent had alzheimers it would be hard not to feel guilty if you didn't try it, no matter the price. To approve the drug despite the lack of efficacy is unethical, especially considering there are potentially severe side effects like brain swelling.

paulpauper 5y ago

except that financial resources are finite . Without certain standards, costs would spiral out of control more than they already have.

hackinthebochs 5y ago
I am sympathetic to the argument that expensive treatments socialized medicine pays for should be limited to those proven effective. What I am against are blanket restrictions presumably for people's own good, or to prevent "Big Pharma" from profiting or whatever bugaboo it is.
- peytn 5y ago
  We can create combinatorially many drugs. There are labs that can screen hundreds of thousands of molecules a day. So approving drugs that aren’t proven effective for a disease might reasonably lead to few or no drugs that are effective because it’s so easy and relatively cheap to stuff a development pipeline with promising drugs if you don’t need to worry about whether they work at the disease stage due to crowding out effective drugs.