Comment by citizenpaul
3 years ago
I was going to make this point. People at EOL by default often have estates, investments, retirement accounts. In other words huge chunks of money/wealth that unscrupulous people may wish to get their hands on. Combine that with the desperation of a dying person and you have the perfect condition to create a very profitable scammer market for worthless treatments.
This also harms eveyone because all the money pouring into a treatment that was a scam from day one is oppertunitu y lost.
> This also harms eveyone because all the money pouring into a treatment that was a scam from day one is oppertunitu y lost.
You guys remember Theranos? When Safeway announced their deal with Theranos in 2012, a bunch of companies working in blood diagnostics folded because they couldn’t raise money or because their investors clawed back entire rounds.
A couple of friends had just raised a series B round to commercialize their surface plasmon resonance blood testing device, which would have actually done what Theranos promised with onsite blood testing (except with proper blood draw, not a finger prick). They were getting the product ready for golden standard testing with a CRO when investors decided it wasn’t worth trying to compete with a Theranos already in the pocket of major pharmacies and pulled the series B funding.
Patents ended up getting sold to some patent troll shortly before the news broke that Theranos was a scam.
The people who funded Theranos weren’t even desperate, just greedy. Imagine what fingers they’ll put on the scales when they’re actually staring death right in the face? It’ll be a disaster.
I think the argument is to loosen the regulation on human trials, not to drop all regulation on drug companies. They should still have to prove that they’re doing legitimate research and have had some success before opening it up to humans who are terminally ill. They should still be legally culpable for negligence and fraud.
Keep in mind that it's not the pharma companies that are the only, or even most notorious, scammers that would benefit. Families of the dying one are a major risk factor. The difficult[0] truth is, plenty of families would accelerate the demise of a terminally ill or elderly[1] if it were possible. Like with euthanasia, any elective experimental treatment that carries increased risk of death, could become something the patients get pressured or manipulated into by their families.
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[0] - The situations can be ethically and emotionally complex, so I'm not passing any generalized judgement, other that this is something a person might be concerned about when contemplating the possibility of ending up in this situation in the future.
[1] - Arguably the same thing, but that's another topic.
As a general principle, any set of circumstances which results in net increased influence of people who are demonstrably amoral with regard to the public welfare, should have as many barriers as possible put up to obstruct the success of such people.
Bad money chases out good, increasing the fraction of money in bad hands by billions or tens of billions is going to have a palpable effect on the stability of the world.