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The American perspective is to solve every problem with the military or money. We believe that violence and more money are the only effective solutions to ever

The American perspective is to solve every problem with the military or money. We believe that violence and more money are the only effective solutions to every single problem the world faces. Original thinking just doesn't happen. A creative solution would be to temporarily halt all regulations on anti-ebola drug development and let them experiment on any willing person in Liberia who wishes to receive treatment. The example of Banting and Best in the 20s is a great example of the enormous progress that can be accomplished if there is no regulation on medicine. These guys came up with the idea for extracting insulin from animals and injecting it into humans. They tested it out on willing patients, the first being a 14 year old, released the invention for use by the public and won the Nobel prize in the span of 3 years (1921-1923). That speed of drug development and testing is impossible today. A good analogy of the present situation would be this. Someone is drowning in the river. You can use the military to prevent him from knocking any nearby bathers into the river as he floats down stream but don't you dare throw him something handy like a branch or a quickly improvised flotation device because that might help him float and it may not work and there would be lawsuits or regulatory violations! You can pay someone to swim after him and try and save him, but the stream is really rushing fast and they might drown too, but that's seemingly a-ok.

waps 12y ago
And who pays for the, potentially unbounded fallout from that decision ? Let's say this happens : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide (First read about the advantages of the drug, then move to the crises. in particular the birth defects crisis) And please don't just say that people knowingly took the risk, read the article first to see how that played out. People won't accept the consequences of decisions made under duress (and this decision would be "death or we experiment on you". Decision to be made in an isolation camp, guarded by soldiers with guns), for obvious reasons, and this has been an accepted legal principle since a millenium before Jesus was born. You're suggesting just canceling it ? Really ? What you're suggesting is a really, really, really, really bad idea.
- ng12 12y ago
  I would argue there are at least a few orders of magnitude between someone with morning sickness and someone who will almost definitely die of Ebola or T1 Diabetes. It's a calculated risk, sure, but I don't think the Thalidomide example is particularly relevant.
  - hueving 12y ago
    >It's a calculated risk, sure, but I don't think the Thalidomide example is particularly relevant. It's very relevant. It shows that people are too willing to take risks with major unknowns. Where do you make the cutoff with your drug experiments? Only people that are certain to die? People with high exposure risk? People that are having difficulties recovering? Any selection you pick there is completely arbitrary because you don't know the potential downsides to the experimental stuff you want to try.
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      "Where do you make the cutoff with your drug experiments? " I don't know where you make the cutoff, but I'm comfortable saying that its somewhere below having a disease with a 50% mortality rate in under 14 days. I'm pretty much okay taking any risk at that point.
      - Padding 12y ago
        You didn't get the point of the argument. What do you do when something with 51% mortality in 15 days comes up? And then something with 49% in 13 days .. where do you draw the line? And what do you do when people continue to cry out?
        barrkel 12y ago
        The existence of a Sorites paradox doesn't mean that heaps and grains are not different things.
        ghshephard 12y ago
DennisP 12y ago
I'm a libertarian too, and agree that the FDA is overly cautious, but I don't think drug research is an effective response to an acute epidemic. When something's growing exponentially you have to stop it quickly.
krschultz 12y ago
So far it seems like quality of medical facilities & care is far more important than the availability of drugs. I think even without the drugs, if all of the original patients had access to great hospitals, this wouldn't have spread the way it has. Unfortunately those resources simply do not exist in the affected countries. I'm all for effectively unlimited money from the first world to help pay for a response to this outbreak, but even if there was unlimited resources you can't just build up a whole medical infrastructure with the snap of your fingers.
jfoutz 12y ago
I'm from the american southwest, there's a kind of snake here who's effects of venom are remarkably similar to the effects of ebola. All the crazy regulation has been holding up any US research, but in northern mexico, a Doctor Stanley has been doing monkey trials. His unique combination of mineral oil seems to boost immune response, while the venom inures the cells to ebola's most harmful attack vectors. I realize the people of Africa are very poor and can't really afford the scale of production necessary. Perhaps your country would be willing to help out with a few million dollars, I'm sure this snake oil would do some good.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Don't listen to that charlatan, you would be much better investing the money in my range of anti-viral mist diffusers. I've had one running for a year now and nobody on my street has Ebola. It also seems to work against tigers.
- bewo001 12y ago
  You mean, a kind of oil made with snakes? A snake-oil?

waps 12y ago

And who pays for the, potentially unbounded fallout from that decision ? Let's say this happens : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide (First read about the advantages of the drug, then move to the crises. in particular the birth defects crisis) And please don't just say that people knowingly took the risk, read the article first to see how that played out. People won't accept the consequences of decisions made under duress (and this decision would be "death or we experiment on you". Decision to be made in an isolation camp, guarded by soldiers with guns), for obvious reasons, and this has been an accepted legal principle since a millenium before Jesus was born. You're suggesting just canceling it ? Really ? What you're suggesting is a really, really, really, really bad idea.

ng12 12y ago
I would argue there are at least a few orders of magnitude between someone with morning sickness and someone who will almost definitely die of Ebola or T1 Diabetes. It's a calculated risk, sure, but I don't think the Thalidomide example is particularly relevant.
- hueving 12y ago
  >It's a calculated risk, sure, but I don't think the Thalidomide example is particularly relevant. It's very relevant. It shows that people are too willing to take risks with major unknowns. Where do you make the cutoff with your drug experiments? Only people that are certain to die? People with high exposure risk? People that are having difficulties recovering? Any selection you pick there is completely arbitrary because you don't know the potential downsides to the experimental stuff you want to try.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    "Where do you make the cutoff with your drug experiments? " I don't know where you make the cutoff, but I'm comfortable saying that its somewhere below having a disease with a 50% mortality rate in under 14 days. I'm pretty much okay taking any risk at that point.
    - Padding 12y ago
      You didn't get the point of the argument. What do you do when something with 51% mortality in 15 days comes up? And then something with 49% in 13 days .. where do you draw the line? And what do you do when people continue to cry out?
      - barrkel 12y ago
        The existence of a Sorites paradox doesn't mean that heaps and grains are not different things.
      - ghshephard 12y ago

DennisP 12y ago

I'm a libertarian too, and agree that the FDA is overly cautious, but I don't think drug research is an effective response to an acute epidemic. When something's growing exponentially you have to stop it quickly.

krschultz 12y ago

So far it seems like quality of medical facilities & care is far more important than the availability of drugs. I think even without the drugs, if all of the original patients had access to great hospitals, this wouldn't have spread the way it has. Unfortunately those resources simply do not exist in the affected countries. I'm all for effectively unlimited money from the first world to help pay for a response to this outbreak, but even if there was unlimited resources you can't just build up a whole medical infrastructure with the snap of your fingers.

jfoutz 12y ago

I'm from the american southwest, there's a kind of snake here who's effects of venom are remarkably similar to the effects of ebola. All the crazy regulation has been holding up any US research, but in northern mexico, a Doctor Stanley has been doing monkey trials. His unique combination of mineral oil seems to boost immune response, while the venom inures the cells to ebola's most harmful attack vectors. I realize the people of Africa are very poor and can't really afford the scale of production necessary. Perhaps your country would be willing to help out with a few million dollars, I'm sure this snake oil would do some good.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Don't listen to that charlatan, you would be much better investing the money in my range of anti-viral mist diffusers. I've had one running for a year now and nobody on my street has Ebola. It also seems to work against tigers.
bewo001 12y ago
You mean, a kind of oil made with snakes? A snake-oil?