Comment by londons_explore
3 years ago
And that is why you shouldn't be able to ask for the experimental treatment... You should be able to ask to be part of a trial of the experimental treatment.
Remember that if 10 treatments are being tried at once, you can divide the pool of participants so that only a smallish percentage are part of the control group.
...I think that's basically how it works? If the company is running a trial, you can enroll in the trial. AFAIK being in a trial is free for participants.
Of course, there are any number of reasons someone may be rejected from the trial. If that happens, the company isn't going to just freely give them the drug anyway, because it wouldn't provide scientifically valid data. Also, no one would enroll in a trial (which carries the potential of getting the placebo) if they could get the treatment outside the trial.
The drug itself might be paid for, as well as tests under the scope of the study (which might be narrow), but services to administer the drug, and tests or treatment for effects not in the scope of the study, aren't always covered. Or, in the stupidest cases, approval gets bogged down by the drug company, patient, or administering clinic/practitioner trying to get the patient's insurance to cover whatever's not covered by the trial for so long that the patient no longer qualifies (or is dead) by the time insurance relents and agrees to pay.
I have no better words: that is evil.
Can you clarify why that is evil? Are you referring to the use of control groups or the division of the test group into several overlapping trial compounds?
Having a control group, but specifically in a study only given to terminally ill patients. Leave the control group to a subsequent study after effectiveness has been established in terminally ill patients.
I understand control groups in general, those are fine. But this is specifically in trials where people are pinning their last hopes out of desperation on some medicine and some random drop of the dice seals their fate.
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I bet it's control groups.
The FDA thinks similarly. In late 2021, they canceled trials of Paxlovid because it was immoral to have a control group. They did not then _waive the trial requirement_, meaning Paxlovid was both too proven to deny but too unproven to be administered.