Butch Femme Planet - View Single Post

AtLast · 07-02-2011, 02:45 PM

I might be stepping into some do-do here, but I have a bit of a sensitivity to blanket statements about the guinea-pig slant and slam. Not all scientific drug studies are made up of unsuspecting people at the hands of FDA regulation or lack of it.

There are many drug trials that fall into experimental lines (with legal sanctioning) that people, and I think rather heroic people done with full disclosure that can and do bring us significant data that does save lives as chemo therapies are developed.

My brother died in 1990 due to pancreatic cancer. At that time, the chances of having even 5 years of remission for this type of cancer due to the chemo therapies and radiation therapy then used was dismal. He did after exhausting the therapies available and FDA approved at the time, sign on to experimental trials of drugs and knew that he was really only giving researchers (his own oncologist) a way to actually see if their hypotheses about the drug’s effectiveness was at least heading the right direction. Yes, there was a “last-ditch” hope going on for my brother as there is for most people that enter into these studies- he figured a month or two more with his child was worth it. And yes, he felt that if this helped medical science to gain on this deadly and swiftly moving form of cancer, why not do this- he was dying anyway at the age of 47.

Today, this chemo regimen has become the leading therapy for pancreatic cancers and it is the very one that the Cancer Centers of America uses that we see all those media commercials of. What really is something to lose one’s temper over is that this drug regimen is extremely costly and it isn’t available to all pancreatic patients in the US. And we all know why this is.

Yes, I can get angry with the FDA and pharmaceutical companies, yet, I also see another side to things to this debate. I absolutely want the public to be protected against negligence in medicine and research, but I also want the minds that work on the sciences behind chemo therapies for all disease to be able to do this work. The fact is, every cut to the budgets of the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and the continued right-wing political barring of stem cell research in the US is what our real focus ought to be on. Not properly funding scientific research and allowing unconstitutional religious ideology to guide medical research is what really makes guinea-pig out of all of us.

07-02-2011, 02:45 PM	#70
AtLast Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: Woman Preferred Pronoun?: HER - SHE Relationship Status: Relating Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: CA & AZ I'm a Snowbird Posts: 5,408 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 11,826 Thanked 10,827 Times in 3,199 Posts Rep Power: 21474857	I might be stepping into some do-do here, but I have a bit of a sensitivity to blanket statements about the guinea-pig slant and slam. Not all scientific drug studies are made up of unsuspecting people at the hands of FDA regulation or lack of it. There are many drug trials that fall into experimental lines (with legal sanctioning) that people, and I think rather heroic people done with full disclosure that can and do bring us significant data that does save lives as chemo therapies are developed. My brother died in 1990 due to pancreatic cancer. At that time, the chances of having even 5 years of remission for this type of cancer due to the chemo therapies and radiation therapy then used was dismal. He did after exhausting the therapies available and FDA approved at the time, sign on to experimental trials of drugs and knew that he was really only giving researchers (his own oncologist) a way to actually see if their hypotheses about the drug’s effectiveness was at least heading the right direction. Yes, there was a “last-ditch” hope going on for my brother as there is for most people that enter into these studies- he figured a month or two more with his child was worth it. And yes, he felt that if this helped medical science to gain on this deadly and swiftly moving form of cancer, why not do this- he was dying anyway at the age of 47. Today, this chemo regimen has become the leading therapy for pancreatic cancers and it is the very one that the Cancer Centers of America uses that we see all those media commercials of. What really is something to lose one’s temper over is that this drug regimen is extremely costly and it isn’t available to all pancreatic patients in the US. And we all know why this is. Yes, I can get angry with the FDA and pharmaceutical companies, yet, I also see another side to things to this debate. I absolutely want the public to be protected against negligence in medicine and research, but I also want the minds that work on the sciences behind chemo therapies for all disease to be able to do this work. The fact is, every cut to the budgets of the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and the continued right-wing political barring of stem cell research in the US is what our real focus ought to be on. Not properly funding scientific research and allowing unconstitutional religious ideology to guide medical research is what really makes guinea-pig out of all of us.