alt Hacker News> Clinical implications: While more research will be needed before trials in humans can begin
Why? Seriously, think about it. Most people with pancreatic cancer have nothing to lose and many of them have just weeks or months to live.
Daraxonrasib, Afatinib, and SD36 are molecules that can already be purchased in bulk, and what's the worst that can happen?
Our society's morbid, irrational fear of quack medicine causes orders of magnitude more deaths through therapeutic neglect than it prevents through safety screening. "Better 10,000 die of cancer than 1 person die of fraud/waste/mismanagement or even in failed experiments performed in good faith."
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Yeah putting myself in the shoes of someone with this disease or a loved one with this disease I would be so incredibly angry that we weren't allowed to try something when the alternative is certain death
> what's the worst that can happen?
The patient dies from complications of the drug's use before the cancer.
> Our society's morbid, irrational fear of quack medicine
It is not an irrational fear.
Brandolini's Law applies: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
The only way to prevent quackery is to cut it off hard before it gets started.
Wakefield demonstrated the disaster that happens when you don't.
(And if you have been reading this site for very long, you know the experimental treatments are already around--we're not currently lacking for possible cancer treatments. The problem is finding the trial. Then the problem is getting people through the process and then getting them to the trial. See: "Please be dying, but not too quickly": https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/please-be-dying-but-not-...)
Things are, at least, getting better with the passage of right to try laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law
These drugs seem to all be only allowed after Phase 1 trials, so still not quite at the level you're describing here.
That’s because we have a system that financially punishes fraud and mismanagement which is what we want and should keep.
There should be a way for terminal cases to volunteer for early trials and I believe there is already legislation that provides that but it’s not used and funded enough.
I had a relative who died from this around 20 years ago. 50yo slim, sportive and healthy and after going to a diagnostic as she didn't feel good, she was gone within a few months .. So yeah, if there is even a slight chance it works, this should be tried and that'd save people :(
We might take it too far, but the fear of quack medicine is extremely rational.
good news, are current FDA has many ways of fast tracking a treatment and a willingness to do so
IMO, if you view your question from the ethical framework of "do no harm" i.e. the hippocratic oath instead of "move fast and break things", I can clearly see reason for the apprehension. The standards aren't positioned to catch "quack medicine" but to require full understanding before asking someone else to put something in their bodies. It's somewhat of an entitled stance that youd be okay with other people possibly needlessly dying in any circumstance for something experimental, and not one I'd ever want taken as an official stance by a regulated medical body.
Ethics is a topic I would never trust HN on.
There are already many "compassionate use" exceptions out there already. I've family friends be grated that. It helps the pharma company as well as the patient. I'm sure that will happen here.