"Right To Try Woo" laws being advocated for...

[Archae]

Just great.

'Right To Try' law will allow Dallas Buyers Club-style experimental drugs

Three US states to let terminally ill patients use medication before government approval

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10839233/Right-To-Try-law-will-allow-Dallas-Buyers-Club-style-experimental-drugs.html

[tkmorris]

1. Not sure why this bothers you

There is a vast difference between newly developed drugs which show potential but are not yet through the FDA process to be approved and "woo". And even if there weren't, da fuck do you care? A patient is dying, there are no treatment options for them, and you wanna tell em they can't try whatever the hell they want to try?

[Archae]

3. Because woo will be advocated for.

It's inevitable.

The movie "Dallas Buyers Club" is anti-real science and pro-woo.
It's also like so many other Hollywood productions, 95% bullshit.
http://www.senseaboutscience.org/blog.php/84/dallas-buyers-club-and-the-myths-of-aids-activism

There is a real reason our FDA has an approval process.

Want a return to the days when the makers of thalidomide pressured politicians to lean on the FDA?

How about letting cancer patients buy all the laetrile they want?

[Warpy]

6. Oh, that old slippery slope

In the latter 80s in Boston, drug companies were quietly giving us HIV drugs that hadn't been completely through the pipeline because without them, a patient's life expectancy was measured in hours. By the time 1990 rolled around, we'd gotten it up to months on things identified only as a series of numbers and letters. Now it's years and drugs are back to the normal pipeline.

Woo wasn't part of it then and it won't be part of it now, although no law out there says that dying patients can't try rubbish in the hope of hitting the placebo effect for a while.

I'd suggest people put slippery slopism on the shelf where the other fallacies reside.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. I don't know that I would classify that as "woo" so much as "risky".

Experimental drugs, while still under development, may or may not help and may even harm, but at the very least there is some science going on in the process.

Let's keep in mind, AZT was an "experimental drug" in 1964 and turned out be very helpful when HIV came along a decade or so later. It didn't work against cancer as it was designed to do, but did become our first NRTI.

This is a lot closer to "early access" than "woo". Risky as hell, but for people who are dying, the risk may be worth taking.

[NuclearDem]

7. That's what I was thinking.

Pharmaceuticals aren't woo, but it's still dangerous to use untested drugs.

If we were talking about bee sting therapy or Carnivora, then yes, that'd be woo.

[riderinthestorm]

4. Oh ffs! These people are dying! Let them try any potential treatment

[Archae]

5. Sure thing! Let them lose their money to this guy!

http://americanloons.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1045-william-rader.html

[Adrahil]

8. Ya know what? If I'm terminal, I might as well try woo.

I'm against woo in general, but if someone's dying? Let 'em do what they want.

[Archae]

9. Yup. Let them be cheated out of their life savings, too.

[Adrahil]

10. So... Save their money for what? They are TERMINAL.

Ya can't take it with you.

[Archae]

11. Just give it all to a quack.

http://americanloons.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1045-william-rader.html