5 ms·

A lot of the regulation has allowed people to die when there was a chance they would have lived without it. Regulations on advertising and OTC drugs are absolut

A lot of the regulation has allowed people to die when there was a chance they would have lived without it. Regulations on advertising and OTC drugs are absolutely needed, but stopping a doctor from prescribing a risky drug to a terminally ill patient who will die without it anyway is counterproductive. The main reason people aren't healthy has nothing to do with the medical system or regulation. It has everything to do with lifestyle. Technology will not help at all in that regard. The mobile-device generation will be less healthy and even more physically disconnected than the current one, which is a horrifying thought given how bad the state of affairs is right now. Man is a physical animal, and movement will always beat analysis when it comes to improving health outcomes. We already know how to improve health, we choose not to do it.

vacri 12y ago
stopping a doctor from prescribing a risky drug to a terminally ill patient who will die without it anyway is counterproductive. And if the patient survives, but has a debilitating condition that was a side-effect of that risky drug, then claims he was going to survive anyway and now his life has a shattered quality because the doctor prescribed an drug that hadn't been fully cleared yet? It's not as black and white as you're painting it, and drugs are not always silver bullets that save your life and send you back to playing the violin like the virtuoso you once were. Conversely, if you didn't have that regulation, you'd have medication with a much lower quality - more people dying, and more negative side-effects for the ones who survived. Plenty of drugs look promising at the outset, then turn out to have serious issues.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Governments can test and give a stamp of approval to new drugs without punishing people who ignore their advice.
- uxp 12y ago
  > if you didn't have that regulation, you'd have medication with a much lower quality Kind of like supplements? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements-are-often-not-what-they-seem.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > stopping a doctor from prescribing a risky drug to a terminally ill patient who will die without it anyway is counterproductive. It's also about balancing incentives. If there were no such regulations whatsoever, you'd find yourself in a situation, where a patient with a mild cancer and a broken arm is potentially "terminally ill" and needs the New Risky Drug. It could degenerate to regular, systematic experimentation on humans in the guise of "doing everything we can".

vacri 12y ago

stopping a doctor from prescribing a risky drug to a terminally ill patient who will die without it anyway is counterproductive. And if the patient survives, but has a debilitating condition that was a side-effect of that risky drug, then claims he was going to survive anyway and now his life has a shattered quality because the doctor prescribed an drug that hadn't been fully cleared yet? It's not as black and white as you're painting it, and drugs are not always silver bullets that save your life and send you back to playing the violin like the virtuoso you once were. Conversely, if you didn't have that regulation, you'd have medication with a much lower quality - more people dying, and more negative side-effects for the ones who survived. Plenty of drugs look promising at the outset, then turn out to have serious issues.

mike_hearn 12y ago
Governments can test and give a stamp of approval to new drugs without punishing people who ignore their advice.
uxp 12y ago
> if you didn't have that regulation, you'd have medication with a much lower quality Kind of like supplements? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements-are-often-not-what-they-seem.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements...
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> stopping a doctor from prescribing a risky drug to a terminally ill patient who will die without it anyway is counterproductive. It's also about balancing incentives. If there were no such regulations whatsoever, you'd find yourself in a situation, where a patient with a mild cancer and a broken arm is potentially "terminally ill" and needs the New Risky Drug. It could degenerate to regular, systematic experimentation on humans in the guise of "doing everything we can".