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A comment on FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out. Parent comment

Re:FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out by bsder on Friday January 15, 2021 @05:42PM (#25797526)
> For example, Moderna's mRNA vaccine technology languished on the shelves, unused, for ten years before our present crisis forced its hasty validation.

It languished because human trials are expensive and vaccines against rare diseases don't make any money.

And the rules around human trials are there for a reason. Tuskegee wasn't that long ago. The Stanford Prison Experiment was useless and caused much harm.

Once we had Covid, suddenly there was LOTS of money to run those human trials in the proscribed manner. And there were lots of volunteers to do so without human coercion.

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Re:FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out by maxharris on Friday January 15, 2021 @06:15PM (#25797874)
It languished because human trials are expensive and vaccines against rare diseases don't make any money.

Correct. This is because regulations raise the barrier to entry for new drugs to $2.6 billion (in 2019 dollars) https://www.policymed.com/2014/12/a-tough-road-cost-to-devel...

Obviously, some amount of testing is necessary to bring a new drug to market (and the examples you point out support this). If there is no alternative but suffering and death for a condition, having these blanket regulations in place that block new drugs and new treatments only contributes to suffering.

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Re:FDA blindsided as Trump Admin cripples agency on its way out by jki275 on Saturday January 16, 2021 @12:30AM (#25800307)
pedantry -- but the word is "prescribed", "proscribed" means prohibited.
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