Comment by gus_massa
3 years ago
> It would certainly benefit the families left behind financially, but it would not be pretty.
You are very optimistic. Medics will sell expensive snake oil treatment to desperate families. For example, from the bottom of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer#History
> In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of women who had successfully completed standard treatment then demanded and received high-dose bone marrow transplants, thinking this would lead to better long-term survival. However, it proved completely ineffective, and 15–20% of women died because of the brutal treatment.
> You are very optimistic. Medics will sell expensive snake oil treatment
I think you misunderstood. My point was that it would benefit the families because a company would gladly pay a million bucks to give a dying cancer patient the first human dose of 40 drugs they haven’t yet done any testing on, just to get quick human feedback.
The “patient” in that scenario won’t likely get any benefit from the money, but the family they leave behind would.
Obviously this is not something we want to actually see happening, but the cynic in me know that if a company can save billions by skipping all trials and going straight to “dying human” they will, and they’d be happy to pay the expendable subject a million or even more, they still come out net positive.