doggy
No, it would not be unethical to run clinical trials on africans, I was commenting on (misguided) public perception which would be enough to steer drug development companies away. Giving someone a placebo instead of an actual treatment is only unethical if the drug has been demonstrated to work. This would be determined by an independant committe monitoring the trials that has the authority to halt the trial and have the treatment administered to all those being given the placebo. So any complaints that getting a placebo while others are treated are misguided. Most people dont realize this is the case, probably becuase such an clear demonstration of efficacy in a clinical trial is rahter uncommon. We still dont really know if the ZMapp injectible that was given to the US missionaries actually helped them get better or hindered their recovery. Most of the people given the Zmapp infusion died (there were 7 in total I believe).
Regarding the employment of an alternative to the for-profit model, who would decide that public money should have been spent on an Ebola cure prior to the most recent outbreak? What justification would a proponent of such an idea have offered when it was such a ridiculously niche condition, considering all the real, tangible effects that the same amount of public money could bring when applied to more pertinent issues (could be considered a criminal misuse of funds). The for-profit model is usually the most responsible mechanism of distributing funds. The most pertinent issues get the most attention. Even if public $$$ was thrown at Ebola starting with this most recent outbreak, we wouldnt be any further ahead. The for-profit model seem to have done us pretty well here, but I think you are have a good point, although I am still a proponent of free market principles, in this case it could use a little help getting more doses out there as a pandemic prophylaxis.
And to adress you other point, if a poor person with zero $$$ only dirt goes to any health care clinic and says, ‘I may have ebola’. They will get treated ASAP. No question. Try it out.
for profit model fails because of bullshit copyright laws. That’s why, there’s no arguing this. It worked in the 30’s and all the way to the 70’s. when important reactions, or even having certain chemicals is illegal unless you pay millions, yeah, I don’t see how that can feasibly work. Maybe that’s why insurance needs to subsidize all that medication. some medication is expensive due to expensive starting materials, or key catalysts, but when you start having 100+ dollar pills. Yeah, it’s not the materials
Copyright laws *are *out of control, but I think what you are talking about are patent laws (which are continuously being whittled away by progressive pols, which only drives prices higher), but in this case you would be wrong imo. Most medications are relatively cheap to manufacture, so of course you are not paying for materials, you are paying for knowledge that was acquired at high expense over a long period of time (generics are the real price gougers, they have zero R&D expenditures). The R&D that goes into getting a drug to market is very expensive and patent laws are the only reason why drug developers are willing to pour in the billions of dollars it takes to get a molecule through clinical trials (and not just any org could do drug development, biotech/pharma has the knowledge and experience and is the best at it, not some collection of scientists brough together and paid by the NIH). Govt mandated clinical trials are very expensive and keep in mind that the attrition rate once a molecule gets to clinical trials is around 95% (maybe around 1 in a million even make it to the clinical trial stage) and you can see how much $$$ gets poured into drug development R&D. If developers arent guaranteed a reasonable period of time to recoup their investment, none of them will ever take the risk to develop any drugs, they simply wouldnt exist. And we would have no drugs. As it is molecules must be patented as soon or even prior to discovery and by the time the molecule is brought to market, the patent lifetime is nearing the end. What model is going to be better than a for-profit drug development model? Sure govt sponsored research programs have discovered a handful of drugs, but **no such program has ever brought a drug to market. Period.
**
As far as for-profit companies developing ebola treatments there are plenty, and they are using different target (monclonal antibodies, traditional antiviral targets, siRNA, vaccines). Some for-profit companies with treament in develoment: ZMapp, Medivector, Biocryst, Chimerix, GSK, Tekmira, Sarepta, Leaf/Mapp/Defyrus. So there is certainly a great deal of interest, and its not like these greedy sycophant drug co.s are sitting on thier hands waiting to steal you money.
And insurance does subsidize medication (this is how insurance works, the healthy subsidize the sick).
It really ticks me off when pubic announcements or the media in general goes “people need to be aware of the signs so action can be taken early”. I think it has been obvious for decades that the reason why people don’t take action early is due to the pricing of medical bills not ignorance. You can know all the signs but if you don’t have the money in your wallet then you can’t do shit about it and you will end up deluding yourself that nothing is going wrong until it’s too late. Even when a person gets confined, he/she can’t pay the right amount to get the right amount of treatment.
Just got a notice from the CEO about an hour ago:
Interesting. @Rhio2k Yeah, don’t trust the media. Ever.
#PatientGate
The Spanish nurse that was the first person outside of west Africa to contract Ebola tests negative
more here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29683616
So the dog and hundreds of protesters/police died for nothing? Ah well good news for the nurse though lul.
I’d like to know what the end-game for helping Africa is…cuz just like AIDS, they’re not going to change what they do to avoid getting and spreading Ebola, but they want us to fix it. There will be continued outbreaks, no matter what we do, due to virus mutation. This is going to be endless until somebody wises up and says we have to quit, let the fire burn itself out, and try to protect ourselves. We still don’t know how many smoldering embers we have here, waiting to ignite. Since it’s October, I’ll use a movie monster analogy: you don’t keep sending people to fight The Thing. You isolate it and do your damndest to keep it from getting to any densely populated areas, or civilization in general.
They torched the thing. Ebola is very containable, ie education. Dont eat monkies, some kind of food standards over in Africa and boom its gone. A vaccine would be nice as well. The virus kills people and its tricky but its got nothing on HIV/AIDs, which if you have money/live in a country with good healthcare, its not even that big of a thing. Certainly not a death sentence.
Privacy issues, HIPAA violations, misinformation and fear mongering by the news media, politicians politicizing Ebola as a way to get votes for the coming election, etc. are just some of the issues that’s going on during this whole Ebola situation. These issues are very important and need to be addressed. You can’t sweep these issues under the rug and say we should only focus on surveillance and containing the spread of Ebola in America.
Here’s another issue:
Some kids are being turned away from New Jersey schools because they’re African - http://www.mediaite.com/tv/elementary-school-throws-ebola-tantrum-over-two-kids-from-rwanda/
Not only are schools turning down these kids, but parents of other children are scared of sending their kids to school. Watch the video in that link. It states that the school informed teachers that school will have two kids from Africa will be taking classes there. The letter eventually got into the hands of parents of other children. The school decided that they will be taking temperature from those African kids three times a day for the next 21 days. WHAT THE FUCK?
Result? MORE FEAR
Even if the kids are cleared, parents of other children will have those kinds of thoughts going through their head whenever they think of children from Africa.
A similar issue is happening in Nebraska:
The ignorance is astounding
Media has caused so much fear mongering that it’s ruining innocent children’s lives. Sad.
Free will is stupid because of shit like this.
So…the troops from the 101st Airborne Division going over there to build facilities after their extensive 4-hour-primer on Ebola will face a minimal risk of exposure because they won’t be dealing directly with the infected. So they are just given gloves and a facemask, and forbidden to shake hands. Ok…where are they going to be staying? In tent cities near an airfield. They will be checked for fever before leaving the workzone…despite Ebola not always causing fever before incapacitating the sufferer. Huh…how are they going to get around? Local drivers and trucks will be working with this effort. What will they be doing during their recreational time? Good question. Hopefully not interacting with the locals. LOTTA brothers in the division being sent over there, and that division looks like a sausage party… So, what happens if (oh, who are we kidding? WHEN) a service member catches ebola? They will be stabilized locally, then flown back to America to a proper medical treatment facility. Military or civilian facility? They have to get back to us on that as they are still, quote “working the pieces”. When I first heard about this it sounded like a kneejerk “We gotta do SOMETHING!!” dumbass reaction…and now it sounds like a clusterfuck in the making. It has all the earmarks of everything that goes wrong in this administration’s plans: unshakable, chin-in-the-air confidence despite sketchy-at-best, half-assed at worst planning, and no solid plans for when something inevitably happens.
I knew this was going to happen. Knee-jerk reactionary idiots disguising their xenophobia as “caution”.
God damn sheltered white Americans.
Middle Easterners were railed hard last decade after 9/11, Asians were synonymous with SARS for awhile, and other examples in recent memory. The utter failure at containment in the US and elsewhere, and stupid media hysteria (why people still watch “everything is breaking news” “lemme shove my mic in your face after an unspeakable tragedy” cable news is beyond me) means it’s black people’s turn. Sad/stupid but predictable/precedented.
It was black people’s turn like 50 years ago. When will white american’s get their try?