6 ms·

You can only make drugs to treat medical problems of some sort. I think the argument is that the cost/benefit is never positive for drugs that aren't attempting

You can only make drugs to treat medical problems of some sort. I think the argument is that the cost/benefit is never positive for drugs that aren't attempting to just bring you back to baseline. Basically imagine you are perfectly healthy, and you take a drug that has a 99.9% chance of increasing your IQ by 20 points, or a 0.1% chance of reducing your IQ by 5 points. The FDA would basically say "no way in fucking hell, you don't need the extra IQ points to cure any problem, and there is a risk of brain damage". Now if that same drug was instead marketed towards helping people with traumatic brain injuries heal, then it could maybe get approval. There was a petition a few years back to the FDA to change this to allow research into life extending drugs, but AFAIK it didn't go anywhere.

delfinom 2y ago
Death is a medical problem, terminal disease really. Stopping aging stops death.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  We can give a lab mouse any form of cancer and cure it. We can reverse their aging symptoms... yet we've only been able to extend their lifespan by a measly third at best. It's safe to say we're very far away from getting anywhere close to solving aging in humans if we can't even make an immortal mouse despite a century of throwing every possible thing at them without holding back.
  - AlexErrant 2y ago
    I agree, but the pedant in me wants to point out that > despite a century of throwing every possible thing at them without holding back is incorrect. IACUCs exist for a reason. We do hold back.
    - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
      Also, a century? What did we have a century ago? MRI was only invented in 1977, first commercial CT scanner came out in 1970’s, same for ultrasound. Before 1970’s we didn’t have antiviral drugs or DNA sequencing Medicine a hundred years ago was brutal and medieval
      - moffkalast 2y ago
        Believe it or not, lab mice have been used for medical research for over 150 years. We're all high and mighty with our moderns scanners, yet we still do surgery with chisels and hammers, drill teeth, put broken bones in plaster, have sick people congregate all in one place so they get infected with each other's diseases plus get some antibiotic resistant bacteria or two on top. And well, whatever the hell they do in the ER. Medicine is still pretty brutal when it comes down to it.
        ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        That may be so, but it's absolutely fundamental to know where to cut, and to cut in the right place. How are you going to diagnose cancer at an early stage if you have no way to scan and detect anything? Exploratory surgery?
  - starfezzy 2y ago
    I think the point was that the opposite would be true if it weren't for it government intervention.
jiggawatts 2y ago
International competition will eventually force the US to change rules like this. When everyone in China lives till 200 years old and they all have IQs of 130+, the FDA will be pushed aside.
- adamc 2y ago
  There's an assumption here that such drugs will exist. They might not.
- hattmall 2y ago
  The entire drug research sphere outside of the US is miniscule. Unless you can sell the drug in the US there's very little point to investing in the large scale research needed to truly determine efficacy. Yeah there's some minimal state sponsored stuff outside of the US. BUt it's like comparing Little League to the MLB.
  - pcrh 2y ago
    Where do you get this idea from? More than half of all major drug companies are based in Europe and Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_com...
    - adamc 2y ago
      Maybe from the fact that half of all pharmaceutical revenues come from the US (and likely a much higher share of the profits). Single-payer systems are more cost-effective but definitely provide less revenue to pharmaceutical companies.
      - jiggawatts 2y ago
        “We can overcharge patients” in no way leads to the logical conclusion that “more medicine is developed here.” It just means your pharma companies can get away with higher profit margins.
    - 2y ago

delfinom 2y ago

Death is a medical problem, terminal disease really. Stopping aging stops death.

moffkalast 2y ago
We can give a lab mouse any form of cancer and cure it. We can reverse their aging symptoms... yet we've only been able to extend their lifespan by a measly third at best. It's safe to say we're very far away from getting anywhere close to solving aging in humans if we can't even make an immortal mouse despite a century of throwing every possible thing at them without holding back.
- AlexErrant 2y ago
  I agree, but the pedant in me wants to point out that > despite a century of throwing every possible thing at them without holding back is incorrect. IACUCs exist for a reason. We do hold back.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    Also, a century? What did we have a century ago? MRI was only invented in 1977, first commercial CT scanner came out in 1970’s, same for ultrasound. Before 1970’s we didn’t have antiviral drugs or DNA sequencing Medicine a hundred years ago was brutal and medieval
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      Believe it or not, lab mice have been used for medical research for over 150 years. We're all high and mighty with our moderns scanners, yet we still do surgery with chisels and hammers, drill teeth, put broken bones in plaster, have sick people congregate all in one place so they get infected with each other's diseases plus get some antibiotic resistant bacteria or two on top. And well, whatever the hell they do in the ER. Medicine is still pretty brutal when it comes down to it.
      - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        That may be so, but it's absolutely fundamental to know where to cut, and to cut in the right place. How are you going to diagnose cancer at an early stage if you have no way to scan and detect anything? Exploratory surgery?
- starfezzy 2y ago
  I think the point was that the opposite would be true if it weren't for it government intervention.

jiggawatts 2y ago

International competition will eventually force the US to change rules like this. When everyone in China lives till 200 years old and they all have IQs of 130+, the FDA will be pushed aside.

adamc 2y ago
There's an assumption here that such drugs will exist. They might not.
hattmall 2y ago
The entire drug research sphere outside of the US is miniscule. Unless you can sell the drug in the US there's very little point to investing in the large scale research needed to truly determine efficacy. Yeah there's some minimal state sponsored stuff outside of the US. BUt it's like comparing Little League to the MLB.
- pcrh 2y ago
  Where do you get this idea from? More than half of all major drug companies are based in Europe and Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_com...
  - adamc 2y ago
    Maybe from the fact that half of all pharmaceutical revenues come from the US (and likely a much higher share of the profits). Single-payer systems are more cost-effective but definitely provide less revenue to pharmaceutical companies.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      “We can overcharge patients” in no way leads to the logical conclusion that “more medicine is developed here.” It just means your pharma companies can get away with higher profit margins.
  - 2y ago