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And in 15 years we would have a similar post on the internet about how someone should bankroll a competition that increases the safety of these drugs that are f
by polyfractal 15y ago
And in 15 years we would have a similar post on the internet about how someone should bankroll a competition that increases the safety of these drugs that are flooding the market with heinous side effects.
Clinical trials take so long because there are so many regulations about safety. You can argue that cancer patients are going to die anyway, so let them decide to take whatever drugs they want. On the other hand, this opens the most vulnerable people up to those that have the most to gain from exploiting them.
There is a lot of red tape involved in getting a medical drug to market, but a lot of it is there for good reason.
- epistasis 15y ago>Clinical trials take so long because there are so many regulations about safety. Clinical trials take so long because it takes so long to perform the study. Clinical trials cost so much because of regulations, and because of sparing no expense to make them happen more quickly.
- polyfractal 15y agoEh, I'm not sure that is a distinction you can really separate. The regulations require five phases of progressively more difficult requirements, full double-blind trials, etc. Do you really think companies are going to take the time to do proper, five phase trials if it wasn't required?
- zasz 15y agoYeah there are a lot of phases, but each phase takes a while. (Though the first couple phases, which are mostly about ensuring that the drug isn't poisonous, don't take too long.) Clinical work has to move at the speed of biology, which is very slow compared to computers. Skin cells, which have a really short life cycle, divide every 15 days. For a disease like cancer, if even a handful of cancerous cells hasn't been destroyed, you could experience a relapse--but it would take a while, perhaps even years, for the cancer to build back up to detectable levels. If your disease takes years to confirm that it's gone, the clinical trial is going to take years to confirm that it works. It really sucks, but that's just how biology works.
- polyfractal 15y agoExactly, which was my point to the original parent. =) Biology is slow, so effective and scientifically accurate trials are slow. These slow trials are required because of regulations for health and safety reasons, which means time to market is slow for drugs. Which means complaining about the 25 year time to market (the original parent's comment) is really the same as complaining about regulations. Drop the regulations and companies are no longer required to do scientifically accurate/responsible studies, which means faster to-market times (and less safe drugs).
- zasz 15y agoShoot, I think I responded to the wrong comment.