3 ms·

Everybody's terrified of the snake oil days, and almost nobody considers the way things were several decades ago, when cancer researchers were allowed to try th

Everybody's terrified of the snake oil days, and almost nobody considers the way things were several decades ago, when cancer researchers were allowed to try things on patients without government approval, and we made much faster progress than we did after the FDA clamped down. For details, see the book The Death of Cancer by Vincent DeVita, director of the Yale Cancer Center and former director of the National Cancer Institute.

magicalist 3y ago
For context, though, this was in the early 1960s when basically everything was low hanging fruit, so let's not assume the only variable at work is how much the FDA was clamping down. https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/12/18/vincent-devita-we-need-more-mavericks-orac-not-so-much https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/12/18/vincent-devita... is a good take on the work (remember when people used to blog?), and includes some good examples in the same stream of cancer treatment history where it's clearer that cancer researchers trying things on patients without government approval is not clearly necessary and certainly not sufficient for advancing the state of clinical practice. Super interesting history.
- DennisP 3y ago
  The fruit hung lower back then but now we have taller ladders. We've learned a lot since the 1960s. That blog entry is interesting but it's based on an article Malcom Gladwell wrote about DeVita's book; the author says he hadn't read the book himself. It does make some good points. I feel there ought to be a middle ground, where physicians are professionally expected to base decisions on good science (rather than "our patients would vomit on the way home if we gave them the effective dose"), but also we don't have government officials prohibiting terminal patients from getting treatments that oncologists think could help them.

3 ms·

Everybody's terrified of the snake oil days, and almost nobody considers the way things were several decades ago, when cancer researchers were allowed to try th

by DennisP 3y ago

magicalist 3y ago
For context, though, this was in the early 1960s when basically everything was low hanging fruit, so let's not assume the only variable at work is how much the FDA was clamping down. https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/12/18/vincent-devita-we-need-more-mavericks-orac-not-so-much https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/12/18/vincent-devita... is a good take on the work (remember when people used to blog?), and includes some good examples in the same stream of cancer treatment history where it's clearer that cancer researchers trying things on patients without government approval is not clearly necessary and certainly not sufficient for advancing the state of clinical practice. Super interesting history.
- DennisP 3y ago
  The fruit hung lower back then but now we have taller ladders. We've learned a lot since the 1960s. That blog entry is interesting but it's based on an article Malcom Gladwell wrote about DeVita's book; the author says he hadn't read the book himself. It does make some good points. I feel there ought to be a middle ground, where physicians are professionally expected to base decisions on good science (rather than "our patients would vomit on the way home if we gave them the effective dose"), but also we don't have government officials prohibiting terminal patients from getting treatments that oncologists think could help them.