[HN Gopher] Moderna mRNA-4157 (V90) news for head and neck cance...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Moderna mRNA-4157 (V90) news for head and neck cancer patients like
       me
        
       Author : jseliger
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2024-04-12 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jakeseliger.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jakeseliger.com)
        
       | btown wrote:
       | It's surprising to me that we don't have better mechanisms to
       | green-light the combination of factors where (a) a drug company
       | has a history of successfully delivering treatments with full FDA
       | approval, (b) the patient has only months to live, (c) multiple
       | doctors agree that the treatment is superior to any other option
       | for them, and (d) the drug company is prohibited from any kind of
       | marketing for the treatment.
       | 
       | Certainly there are edge cases and loopholes, but there should be
       | much more of a culture of informed consent for terminally ill
       | patients, with common-sense ways to ensure that "quack" drug
       | companies don't take advantage of them.
       | 
       | (Ah, but as I type this, of course there is a party that might
       | not consent to this: the insurer. That's a tough set of
       | incentives to crack, especially with the fact that the treatment
       | may have unknown side effects, and thus cause the patient to fall
       | outside of actuarial expectations. But we've solved harder
       | problems than this before.)
        
         | huytersd wrote:
         | Who really cares about anything when you have 2 months to live.
         | You should be allowed to try anything on a willing participant
         | at that point.
        
           | bhhaskin wrote:
           | Some places allow you to. I believe it's called right to try.
        
         | science4sail wrote:
         | Isn't it a problem of incentives? No one gets penalized if a
         | lifesaving drug gets delayed, but heads will roll if an
         | experimental drug turns out to have horrible side effects
         | and/or financial costs - especially if the test subjects
         | disproportionately belong to a politically-sensitive
         | demographic.
         | 
         | Pandemics are an edge case: it's socially acceptable to violate
         | political and ethical norms during an emergency.
        
       | light_hue_1 wrote:
       | > Part of the approval process could I guess be proving not only
       | efficacy, but the ability to mass-produce the vaccine
       | 
       | This is not the case. That's a totally different part of the FDA.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-04-12 23:02 UTC)