Human experimentation.

[Animus]

Not mutants or supersoldier shit.

I'm talking about the realistic and practical uses of the human body. I've been studying medical ethics recently as one of my core modules. Thanks to 'ethics', its basically illegal to test drugs in the developmental process or practise surgery and etc on humans. This sounds really nice at first, like you're being humane and protecting the rights of people, right?

Wrong.

Its not 'ethical' to do X or Y experiments but its 'ethical' when you let millions of others die to disease or hunger. In all honesty, you could pick a hundred people in the slums or from those starving in Africa. People who would otherwise die anyway or have a life so shitty you can't even begin to imagine it. Give them food, pay for lodging and then happily experiment on them (in a humane manner of course). I'm telling you plenty of people in the world are in conditions so bad that such an offer would be a dream come through.

Do you know how long it takes and expensive it is for medical breakthroughs to occur nowadays? It takes over a decade of research and animal testing before they can even think of attempting trials on humans after they're sure their drug is 99.9% safe on humans.

No company is willing to invest billions of dollars for something like the cure of cancer because of how impractical it is to develop it.

Human experimentation would speed up these researches by leaps and bounds. Like you have no idea.

How many millions of lives would have been saved AND improved if people would just shut the fuck up about ethics? Instead, people feel good they're 'protecting' the rights of these poor souls and happily continue with their lives while these people starve and die.

[mdk]

Human experimentation would speed up these researches by leaps and bounds. Like you have no idea.

For some. For others it will violate the single most important ethical law in medicine -- "First, do no harm."

Now it's important to note -- human trials do happen, on a volunteer basis. I was almost placed in one (ketamine brain drip to treat regional sympathetic dystrophy -- something I'm pretty sure I didn't even have, but they were perfectly eager to sign me up anyway). One in ten of the people who volunteered for that trial got some temporary relief; all of them got, you know, ketamine in their brains, and all the wonderful things that does.

So. From a first-hand almost human lab rat -- no thanks, I'm good. The rules exist for several important reasons. Human experimentation is a smart thing to regulate, and we regulate it almost hard enough. If you fling wide that door, and if you're lucky enough to be a statistical outlier which actually finds a cure for anything at all, your panacea is made out of the shattered lives of everyone who got the shitty Drug 1.0. My advice is to take that energy you would have used on Mad Science, and instead use it to mow someone's lawn or take out their trash, or carry their groceries inside. Start with caring before you jump right to "curing at any and all costs."

[Animus]

<Snipped quote>

For some. For others it will violate the single most important ethical law in medicine -- "First, do no harm."

Now it's important to note -- human trials do happen, on a volunteer basis. I was almost placed in one (ketamine brain drip to treat regional sympathetic dystrophy -- something I'm pretty sure I didn't even have, but they were perfectly eager to sign me up anyway). One in ten of the people who volunteered for that trial got some temporary relief; all of them got, you know, ketamine in their brains, and all the wonderful things that does.

So. From a first-hand almost human lab rat -- no thanks, I'm good. The rules exist for several important reasons. Human experimentation is a smart thing to regulate, and we regulate it almost hard enough. If you fling wide that door, and if you're lucky enough to be a statistical outlier which actually finds a cure for anything at all, your panacea is made out of the shattered lives of everyone who got the shitty Drug 1.0. My advice is to take that energy you would have used on Mad Science, and instead use it to mow someone's lawn or take out their trash, or carry their groceries inside. Start with caring before you jump right to "curing at any and all costs."

@mdk

Human trial's do happen. These trials are basically one of the last steps of drug/medical developments and as I've said, they're usually only conducted when the drugs has an extremely low probability of causing harm to its user.

Your point is bringing up that openly allowing human experimentation would bring ruin to all or most of the lives that its committed on. But I digress, I'm not telling you to snatch people off the streets or anything of the sort. Rather, experiment on people whose lives are otherwise shit anyway. Take someone from a third world country, offer them prospects of food, lodging, money and the chance to make a difference in the world. You'll see very little people rejecting it. These are the people who are dying from hunger and suffering from fatal diseases/ailments that can easily be treated. Take Kwashiorkor for example. You let them take the experiment, they get the hope of living. You don't? They die anyway.

As, I've said earlier, I don't mean for these experiments to be the inhumane over exaggerated stuff you see in films. Instead, I'm advocating reducing the stringent rules of human trials. Instead of a 0.01% risk threshold, change it to 90%.

[mdk]

I'm not telling you to snatch people off the streets or anything of the sort. Rather, experiment on people whose lives are otherwise shit anyway. Take someone from a third world country, offer them prospects of food, lodging, money and the chance to make a difference in the world. You'll see very little people rejecting it. These are the people who are dying from hunger and suffering from fatal diseases/ailments that can easily be treated.

@Animus

And what I'm saying is, take that person from a third world country, offer them food, lodging, and money, and treat the fatal diseases/ailments that can easily be treated, and heck, give them all the money you would've spent on experimentation, too, why not, for the sake of conversation. Then see what sort of difference they make in the world. These are not animals we're talking about -- their lives are every bit as important as the people you're trying to cure.

I know it's not intentional, but your premise is inhumane from the very first. "You let them take the experiment, they get the hope of living." In what way is that a reasonable bargaining position? Really sit back and think about it. That's monstrous.

[Animus]

<Snipped quote by Animus>

And what I'm saying is, take that person from a third world country, offer them food, lodging, and money, and treat the fatal diseases/ailments that can easily be treated, and heck, give them all the money you would've spent on experimentation, too, why not, for the sake of conversation. Then see what sort of difference they make in the world. These are not animals we're talking about -- their lives are every bit as important as the people you're trying to cure.

I know it's not intentional, but your premise is inhumane from the very first. "You let them take the experiment, they get the hope of living." In what way is that a reasonable bargaining position? Really sit back and think about it. That's monstrous.

@mdk

Your mentality is exactly what I'm talking about. You argue how these experiments would be a violation of their rights. "Who are we to conduct such experiments on them if we wouldn't to ourselves?"

Basically thats just self-gratification. Not everyone is equal. Some people are born in shittier standards and others are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. What might sound like a horrible offer to you is a wonderful off to them. Your logic is warped when you realize all the people against these experiments due to 'ethics' don't give two shits when the headlines are about how children are starving in Africa or in Timor-Leste.

I can give you a much brighter example of what you're advocating. I have a friend who hates to share leftovers. She absolutely refuses to let anyone touch her leftovers because she doesn't like the idea of it. She said it feels like she's giving people shit she wouldn't want. That she wouldn't want people to offer her leftovers either. Thats you right now, basically you're against the whole idea of risky human experiments because you would never want someone to do that risky experiment on you.

But that logic doesn't necessarily apply to me. See, I'm hungry and I have no issues with eating that half eaten slice of pizza. But she won't let me because she doesn't like the idea of someone eating her leftovers. Thats self-gratification.

You mentioned in your first post that "actually finds a cure for anything at all". First off, directly testing drugs on humans allow you to collect accurate and immediate data as opposed to animal testing or rambling about stuff in theory. The latter is horribly ineffective because you're essentially just hypothesizing the possible effects.

Secondly, "Your panacea is made out of the shattered lives of everyone who got the shitty Drug 1.0". How did you think medical breakthroughs occurred in the past...? Because physicians back then experimented on animals and had profound understanding of chemistry and the human biology and were able to write reports on why X or Y would be effective? For example, the heart lung machine of today. It was perfected through experimenting on humans. Those humans died. Do people who require cardiopulmonary bypasses today refuse the treatment because it was a technique perfected using the deaths of other humans? Do doctors feel guilty for using it?

The real monstrous and despicable thing here is that people don't want to get their hands dirty. Everyone turns a blind eye to the obvious solutions because it would hurt their conscience. Even though these things only hold benefits for the masses; even to the ones its commited on because thats how crappy their lives are. And noone cares how crappy their lives are.

If somehow you're able to refuse these points of mine, then I will accept that I'm wrong in thinking this way.

[mdk]

If somehow you're able to refuse these points of mine, then I will accept that I'm wrong in thinking this way.

@Animus

Let's give it a shot.

Your mentality is exactly what I'm talking about. You argue how these experiments would be a violation of their rights. "Who are we to conduct such experiments on them if we wouldn't to ourselves?"

Basically thats just self-gratification.

Not at all. The reason we wouldn't conduct such experiments on ourselves is that they're unsafe (you mentioned up to a 90% risk threshold earlier -- that's a 1-in-10 chance of success with a person's life). Gratification doesn't enter the thinking at all -- that's objectively a terrible standard, and if you can get someone to agree on those terms, it can only be via manipulation ("You're dead anyway") or compulsion ("Well I brought a gun, so do it").

Some people are born in shittier standards and others are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. What might sound like a horrible offer to you is a wonderful offer to them.

Also known as exploitation or, in this case, something closer to genocide.

Your logic is warped when you realize all the people against these experiments due to 'ethics' don't give two shits when the headlines are about how children are starving in Africa or in Timor-Leste.

That's clouding your judgment. This is what's known as ad-hominem, and it clouds arguments by mixing in personal reactions where logic should be. I don't care that it's a logical fallacy, what matters is, it sounds like this, to you, is demonstrating that 'well therefore their argument holds no weight at all.' That's simply not the case. For instance, Hitler was all about human experimentation on the underclass, and that has nothing at all to do with the merits of your idea. Separate that emotion out. It's poison.

I can give you a much brighter example of what you're advocating. I have a friend who hates to share leftovers. She absolutely refuses to let anyone touch her leftovers because she doesn't like the idea of it. She said it feels like she's giving people shit she wouldn't want. That she wouldn't want people to offer her leftovers either. Thats you right now, basically you're against the whole idea of risky human experiments because you would never want someone to do that risky experiment on you.

But that logic doesn't necessarily apply to me. See, I'm hungry and I have no issues with eating that half eaten slice of pizza. But she won't let me because she doesn't like the idea of someone eating her leftovers. Thats self-gratification.

I wouldn't want them to do it on me because it's unsafe. I don't want them to do it to other people because it's also unsafe. I don't want people to be manipulated into unsafe experiments by force of circumstance, either. Heck, I'm not even crazy about terminal people being exploited by snake oil salesmen and 'new age medicine,' who prey on hopeless people to get them (in their distress) to shell out money for some stupid thing. And that's just money.

Follow your logic. "You put a quarter in the Cancer jar -- so why not let me stick a needle in this guy's eyeball?" That's a very big leap. In your mind you've set up what's called a 'false equivalency.' Essentially means that you're carrying similarities beyond the scope of their actual connection. Another example would be, "I've got a friend who keeps a fluffy bunny for a pet, and she loves that it's furry. So why not keep a grizzly bear?"

to put it more bluntly: Yes, your friend is exercising self-gratification (or lying to you about why she doesn't want to give you leftovers). This is a wholly different matter.

You mentioned in your first post that "actually finds a cure for anything at all". First off, directly testing drugs on humans allow you to collect accurate and immediate data as opposed to animal testing or rambling about stuff in theory. The latter is horribly ineffective because you're essentially just hypothesizing the possible effects.

Let's not overlook the cost of that accuracy and immediacy. The system we've established exists to mitigate those costs, in the event that the accurate data immediately reads "Nope, not a cure, this one just causes perpetual agony." We allow human testing when a drug has met benchmark standards of safety and effectiveness -- when we're pretty damn sure it's not going to murder the test subjects. And it works -- here's a new cystic fibrosis treatment, here's one for skin cancer, here's one for TB, here's the latest on lukemia, here's Cushing's. To say 'you're essentially just hypothesizing about the possible effects" is a broad mischaracterization.

Secondly, "Your panacea is made out of the shattered lives of everyone who got the shitty Drug 1.0". How did you think medical breakthroughs occurred in the past...? Because physicians back then experimented on animals and had profound understanding of chemistry and the human biology and were able to write reports on why X or Y would be effective? For example, the heart lung machine of today. It was perfected through experimenting on humans. Those humans died. Do people who require cardiopulmonary bypasses today refuse the treatment because it was a technique perfected using the deaths of other humans? Do doctors feel guilty for using it?

well, actually.....

The real monstrous and despicable thing here is that people don't want to get their hands dirty. Everyone turns a blind eye to the obvious solutions because it would hurt their conscience. Even though these things only hold benefits for the masses; even to the ones its commited on because thats how crappy their lives are. And noone cares how crappy their lives are.

Couple things. In the first place, if the solutions were obvious, we wouldn't need human experimentation (or, in the case of a new breakthrough which was obviously an effective cure, it would easily pass the safety standards currently in place and be rushed through the process). Second, reiterating, in the conversation we're having these experiments would hurt my conscience and murder people, for the sake of a hypothetical. Third, if 'that's how crappy their lives are,' and you care, then make their lives less crappy without murdering them. Everybody wins.

[Vilageidiotx]

Well. Damn. This isn't what you expect to see.

I am going to assume what you mean is fatal experimentation, since medical experimentation on human subjects is done fairly regularly through a multitude of studies. What you want is the ability to move away from western applicants who, you feel, are not willing to let you go as wild as you want to.

Imma dive into the ethics part of ethics because I feel this has been neglected. The original premise seems to... more or less assume that poor people have failed to be human because they are poor. Somebody lives in the slums, and not only the slums but the slums of AFRICA! They must not want to live! I really doubt that most people who actually live these lives are seeking to die for a McDouble. These are people who have lives, even if they are troubled lives. They have families or friends, and they do more than stare wantonly at camera's while Sarah Mclachlan plays in the background. There is starvation and disease in these places, which are complex issues that were as a civilization are trying to fix, but just because hunger and disease is common doesn't mean that life in these places are composed of nothing but that.

But lets say you do set up some sort of "St Mengele's Clinic for the Deconstruction of Wayward Poor Folk." And you do go about offering food for the opportunity to do what you want to do. Can you insure that they are informed? If you come up to somebody and say "I will give you a place to stay and some hot soup if, tomorrow, you come to my clinic and..." What you say next is important. Telling somebody the truth in clinical terms, "I will inject your lower urethra with a potent mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate and we will test the effects when these conditions are subjected to rapid oxidization." This could be technically correct, but a person who is uneducated and is naturally inclined to associated doctors with healing could easily consent without knowing that what you just said was. "Imma explode your crotch so I can see what that is like."

So lets say your clinic introduces plain-language consent forms. You go up to these poor people you want to slice up and tell them straight-forwardly what you want to do. "I want to explode your crotch for science." Occasionally, the people you send to get applicants have their ass kicked by frightened poor folk (and the whole world applaudes). Maybe you get one or two sincerely suicidal people. This might look like a fair bargain - human-experimenting doctors get to Frankenstein some poor folk, and enough of these doctors go missing in the slums while seeking applicants so that we don't have to deal with all them returning to the west to haunt us here. But that's not the only problem.

How do you keep people from abducting their neighbors? Or consenting away their children? Sure, you can put in protections, but do you imagine a murder-hospital that doesn't have trouble bringing in patients? Can you ensure that your applicants have been given an option, and more importantly, WOULD your hospital ensure this in the first place? After all, looking the other way and accepting a dirty application would mean a person to experiment on, and it would mean more funding from whoever you managed to winkle money from. It is easy to approach this completely within the hypothetical and say "We will be completely honest" but you are already required to recruit people who do not see these applicants as entirely human, since empathy would necessarily make this sort of work impossible. You simply can't ensure that everything will be on the up and up. St Mengele's couldn't even operate without a decent amount of straight-forward murder.

So, to simplify. Your belief that being poor means that you have no reason to live is flawed. That makes the hospital flawed from its opening. Because applicants would be hard to find, dishonest means of collecting applicants would be necessary for this to continue. Since this hospital's very existence will depend on dishonesty, and because you could only use doctors who don't empathize with the poor, your hospital would by necessity become a murdering machine.

This is the larger problem of ethics. If a perfect world where everybody who came to you for fatal experimentation of their own free will, and with a clear mind not addled by disease or mental disorder, fatal human experimentation could potentially be accepted. But because opening the way for this sort of experimentation inevitably opens the door for significant breaches on human rights, either through trickery or out right murder, fatal human experimentation cannot be allowed.

And if we are completely throwing human rights out the window in all cases where the needs of the many might outweigh the needs of the few, then I want to start a restaurant where we feed students of medical ethics who disagree with the concept of ethics to starving poor people.

[ASTA]

Perform the trials on prison populations.

[mdk]

Perform the trials on prison populations.

@ASTA

Incentivizes convictions. In other words, anybody with a sick relative sitting on a jury has all the more reason to send someone to prison, so that their meat can serve to further the cure effort. Considering we already convict in odd patterns, and overturn a significant number of guilty verdicts, that seems like something the justice system isn't prepared to handle.

[Animus]

This post may be a bit jumbled up as I respond to bit by bit in no particular order.

First off, I should have better phrased human experimentation.

"Imma explode your crotch so I can see what that is like."

You're all making it sound much more horrible that it really is. For example, Hitler or Hitler-like experiments are repeatedly brought up. And exactly what medical benefits does this bring us? I'm suggesting the testing of experimental drugs/techniques that theoretically have a positive effect on the human body but we have no idea if there are potentially unknown side effects. Such drugs take incredibly long times to be approved because they have to give many theoretical reasonings behind why they believe the drug is completely safe for human use.

Regarding the history of the heart-lung machine... the machine itself was perfected through use on humans and adjusting it accordingly. The first patient was a success but subsequently it was discovered that it had a high fatality rate. Only 7 years later after many operations was the machine drastically improved but still had a much higher risk than today for obvious reasons. Is this not exactly what I'm advocating? I'm not telling you to do pointless pain experiments like Hitler wanting to see what happens if you hammer a little boys head every several seconds for days (he really did this). I'm telling you to conduct experiments on techniques or drugs that are mostly complete but need final tweaks and experimentation before they are officially completed and save for human use. As to how much these would improve medical developments, ironically the longest stages and most difficult stages of it are the end experiments where they have to eliminate hidden or long-term risks that are impossibly difficult to spot without actual human testing.

I wouldn't want them to do it on me because it's unsafe. I don't want them to do it to other people because it's also unsafe. "You put a quarter in the Cancer jar -- so why not let me stick a needle in this guy's eyeball?" I don't want people to be manipulated into unsafe experiments by force of circumstance, either. That's a very big leap. In your mind you've set up what's called a 'false equivalency Another example would be, "I've got a friend who keeps a fluffy bunny for a pet, and she loves that it's furry. So why not keep a grizzly bear?"

That is a horrible example and somewhat irrelevant? How do those examples apply to the ideas I'm advocating/my examples. I'm using the concept of "one man's trash is another person's treasure". My friend loves bunnies but that doesn't mean she likes grizzly bears - This example plays on her own preferences and focuses on her individually, which is what you're doing. A correct example would be "My friend doesn't like snakes because they're relatively dangerous when compared to other pets. She tells me I shouldn't keep one. But I want to." You see, I'm going to have to repeat myself earlier. You find the idea ludicrous because you would never accept it being done to you. You argue that they have no choice. This line is the real important one. They're in a situation where it would be ridiculous to NOT accept the offer and you found that wrong. Because thats essentially forcing it upon them. Heres another relevant example to this, I haven't eaten for 3 days. I'm on the brink of death and someone tells me they'll give me a meal except I have to pay them $10,000 dollars for it. In your perspective, thats a despicable thing to do. They're taking advantage of my situation. So you step im and prevent them from doing it. In reality you just stole my meal away when I would have accepted that $10,000 offer.

Third, if 'that's how crappy their lives are,' and you care, then make their lives less crappy without murdering them. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately, thats not how it works. How would you improve their lives? Amass millions of dollars and invest into upgrading their entire country one tier? Where would that money come from? You see, this part is human nature. Nobody is inclined or obliged to help others out. Thats why even though everyone knows how much third world countries suffer, only an extremely tiny percentage of a first world country's GDP is sent to them as donations. I'm sorry if this sounds really cruel buts its reality, most people don't care OR at least, they don't care enough that they should help out complete strangers. Thats why many conditions such as ALS have almost no investments made into developing a cure. Why? Because theres no profit for companies out there! They lose money.

Lastly, the primary issue that I see @mdk and @Vilageidiotx having is that you're worried about such things being exploited. Fortunately, other similar exploitable systems already exist in the world yet they work with proper regulations. By the logic from both of you, wouldn't life insurance be a ridiculous thing? A poor family tries to get their grand parents killed so they can get the lump some of money. "Life insurance should not exist otherwise!" is what you're otherwise saying.

Human experimentation can definitely be regulated to prevent exploits as well as being relatively safe to the individuals it is performed on. At least to the extent, that the benefits to them outweigh the risks for those being experimented on. However, this is not done nor implemented because the populace is concerned about ethics. For example, theres a huge controversy about sending expired food to third world countries. People bark and shout against it, saying that we should be sending them proper food. Well then, if money were to be asked so they could send proper food, what happens? Everyone shuts up and pretends they don't know about it save for a tiny part of the populace.

[Vilageidiotx]

What you are suggesting is done though. Paid human drug trials are definitely a thing. I've considered doing them before since one of the bigger pharmaceutical testing companies are set up near where I live, actually, since they can pay well enough. I'm just too much of a pussy. I also was, for a short period of time when I was in school, approved to do experiments on human subjects. I was licensed for Psychological, but we had to study the medical end of it too before taking the test. (and don't worry, when I say 'short period of time', I mean that the licenses expire rather quickly and I haven't had any reason to renew it. I didn't kill anybody.)

When people talk about morality in human experimentation, they are talking about either the Mengele style vivisection (Which is seriously what I thought you were advocating), or faulty debriefing. Of course, they do preliminary tests to make sure there isn't a meaningful chance of fatality, but you'd want drugs tested thoroughly before put on the market anyway. The later aspect, faulty debriefing, is a matter of those doing the testing failing to tell the volunteer what they were getting into. This was the (first) problem in the Tuskegee experiments, they flat out lied about what they were doing.

The other major issue I recall was that you have to be careful with rewards, because you don't want the reward to become a carrot-on-a-stick used as leverage rather than reward.

Following these regulations though, these things are perfectly legal and part of the process for bringing drugs onto the market.

...and the good the Hitler experiments bring us is a hell of a controversy. Technically... a lot, but any time that information is used it causes some significant debates. Quite a bit of what we know about hypothermia comes from these experiments, though. And that's not counting the earlier experiments done on poor people and slaves in the nineteenth century. Vivisection produces results, this is true, but the evil that came with them was way worse.

...and when it comes to life insurance, the insurance company itself is a regulatory committee. The difference between a hospital practicing vivisection and an insurance company is that the vivisectionists want patients but can't get them honestly, whereas the insurance company doesn't want to pay out and will do what they can to make sure they don't give a pay out to murderous fraudsters.

[mdk]

You're all making it sound much more horrible that it really is. For example, Hitler or Hitler-like experiments are repeatedly brought up.

@Animus

Only once, actually, and only to point out how irrelevant it is to the conversation. I'm specifically not calling you Hitler. Just wanted to reiterate that. Because what you're in fact talking about is just what you said next:

I'm suggesting the testing of experimental drugs/techniques that theoretically have a positive effect on the human body but we have no idea if there are potentially unknown side effects. Such drugs take incredibly long times to be approved because they have to give many theoretical reasonings behind why they believe the drug is completely safe for human use.

This is what I'm disagreeing with. Or rather, the insinuation that this is an injustice. "First, do no harm." That is the bedrock of medical ethics and it should be. If you want to harm yourself to save others, that's your prerogative -- but medical institutions can't make that call. It's hairy enough with organ donors coming into an ER. Open those doors and things get miserable really darn quickly.

*snip Iron Lung response*

What you're advocating is skipping the part where the life-saving machine was tested and proven effective on animals first. What you're advocating is Joe Scientist coming into the patent office and saying "Hey, I bet if I chop open a sick guy's chest I can hook up a motor and probably keep him alive. Send me a hundred brown people and I'll prove it." What I'm advocating is exactly what happened -- the life-saving device was tested, proven effective, and successfully implemented with no human suffering, and the safe practice was refined over time as our understanding improved. It didn't save everybody, but it didn't kill anybody. That is a night-and-day distinction.

why not keep a grizzly bear?

That is a horrible example and somewhat irrelevant?

Exactly. I'm demonstrating the reason why false equivalency is bad thinking. That was the point of that illustration.

I haven't eaten for 3 days. I'm on the brink of death and someone tells me they'll give me a meal except I have to pay them $10,000 dollars for it. In your perspective, thats a despicable thing to do. They're taking advantage of my situation. So you step im and prevent them from doing it. In reality you just stole my meal away when I would have accepted that $10,000 offer.

The only moral thing to do in that situation is to give you a meal for a fair price (I know, I know, you hippies reading this are saying FREE MEAL! bite me). The person taking $10k for a cheeseburger is stealing from you. That person is objectively terrible. What I've been arguing all along is that we continue to practice humane research to help people safely. And I've already linked like a handful of new treatments (just from the last couple of years) to demonstrate what should be readily apparent just from the state of the world you keep moaning about -- western medicine works. Ebola broke out in Africa, not here, and we still cured it in weeks. We're doing everything right, far as research is concerned, and the crazy part is you already implicitly recognize this by comparing the US-Africa health situations.

Third, if 'that's how crappy their lives are,' and you care, then make their lives less crappy without murdering them. Everybody wins.

Unfortunately, thats not how it works.

Bullshit. That's exactly how it works, and if you're not already doing it, you don't actually care.

How would you improve their lives? Amass millions of dollars and invest into upgrading their entire country one tier? Where would that money come from?

You can't solve everything =/= you can't do anything. =/= you should just use them as lab rats instead.

Lastly, the primary issue that I see @mdk and @Vilageidiotx having is that you're worried about such things being exploited. Fortunately, other similar exploitable systems already exist in the world yet they work with proper regulations. By the logic from both of you, wouldn't life insurance be a ridiculous thing? A poor family tries to get their grand parents killed so they can get the lump some of money. "Life insurance should not exist otherwise!" is what you're otherwise saying.

"That's a monstrous crime" is what I'm saying. "You shouldn't murder people to get an advantage" is what I'm saying. One of us is arguing against that.

Human experimentation can definitely be regulated to prevent exploits as well as being relatively safe to the individuals it is performed on. At least to the extent, that the benefits to them outweigh the risks for those being experimented on. However, this is not done nor implemented because the populace is concerned about ethics.

What? Exactly that is 'done and implemented,' and it's because the populace is concerned about ethics. Rightly so. You have an unreasonable definition of what's 'relatively safe to the individuals,' and that's where your frustration is coming from. If you get rid of that, you'll see that the system already actually does what you want it to do, better than how you want to do it, without killing people. Stop trying to fix it with murder.

[Ether]

The sad truth is that the process of passing new medicine is really just needlessly complicated, on purpose. See, businesses like stability, and introducing new, potentially revolutionary drugs into the market disrupts that stability. By making the process needlessly long, they can anticipate the effects a drug can have on the market, minimizing the potential disruption. Pharmaceutical companies are always on the watch for new drugs. Not to mention cheap, accessible and effective drugs means less profit margin. Imposing excessive bureaucracy on human experimentation is just a byproduct of that profit-centric mindset. In a similar way, petroleum companies are trying their darnest to halt the development of alternative energy. The status quo is profitable, why change it? That's how the big heads think, unfortunately.

[mdk]

The sad truth is that the process of passing new medicine is really just needlessly complicated, on purpose. See, businesses like stability, and introducing new, potentially revolutionary drugs into the market disrupts that stability. By making the process needlessly long, they can anticipate the effects a drug can have on the market, minimizing the potential disruption. Pharmaceutical companies are always on the watch for new drugs. Not to mention cheap, accessible and effective drugs means less profit margin. Imposing excessive bureaucracy on human experimentation is just a byproduct of that profit-centric mindset. In a similar way, petroleum companies are trying their darnest to halt the development of alternative energy. The status quo is profitable, why change it? That's how the big heads think, unfortunately.

@Ether

Is it? Them evil drug corps are pushing vaccines out like candy to keep people from getting sick in the first place -- seems like a bad investment. And since pharmaceutical companies pay for their own research, you'd think they'd want more than 8% of their research to hit the markets. Here's how the process actually goes, with some numbers.

[Animus]

@Vilageidiotx I study pharmaceutical sciences so I've seen and studied human trials, the pay is good for it considering you just sit a room all day playing xbox and pool. Basically they're on the 0.01% risk threshold I mentioned earlier and that isn't even the potential for death but merely for more serious adverse effects. These trials are basically a must for all new drugs as the final testing stage. I suggested reducing the stringent rules on them to allow for more rapid development. Say a 90% threshold for adverse effects and a 1% threshold for death. This might sound unappealing to some but this is an amazing good offer considering the risk involved. A standard trial held today pays out between $1000 to $3000. I'm sure companies would offer much more considering the increased risk for these more dangerous trials. A person living in a third world country spends an average of $2 or less a day. You'd essentially be offering them to cure their existing ailments (so you can get accurate tests) and offering them years of livelihood. This is the same as todays trials which still carry an inherent but smaller risk why is why people are paid for them. To change this into a more relatable example... imagine you have a serious ailment. If you don't do anything about it you'll die within several years. Theres a surgery option available but there is a 10% risk of death but if it succeeds, you can live life as per normal. Their ailment is their current lifestyle. Their surgery would be these trials. When you phrase it this way, you realize that it isn't as bad as it sounds and no, this is not sugarcoating it. Pretending that their lifestyles isn't as difficult as I've described would be the sugarcoating.

Regarding the regulations and exploitations; this will always be a debate. IMO as the past has proven time and time again, exploitable and abusable systems can be controlled if proper effort is invested into it. You say that these hospitals might attempt nasty stuff (you have no FUCKING idea what they already do) but I say you can stop them. Make the punishment for breaking regulations severe. Hire an ethics community. These are just random suggestions. There will always be exploitations as any system will have but you can keep it to the absolute minimum if it is properly done. Take the law system for example.

@mdk

This is what I'm disagreeing with. Or rather, the insinuation that this is an injustice. "First, do no harm." That is the bedrock of medical ethics and it should be. If you want to harm yourself to save others, that's your prerogative -- but medical institutions can't make that call. It's hairy enough with organ donors coming into an ER. Open those doors and things get miserable really darn quickly.

What I said already applies to existing trials today and since you've done one before, you should know of it. Companies will make you sign a form that basically washes them of responsibility if anything happens. Nobody knows what they're drugs could potentially do which is why they conduct those tests in the first place. There is nothing wrong with my statement because it is in fact used in modern day trials. There are deaths in modern day trials as well. This is more or less my response although I don't understand where you derived if you want to harm yourself to save others.

What you're advocating is skipping the part where the life-saving machine was tested and proven effective on animals first. What you're advocating is Joe Scientist coming into the patent office and saying "Hey, I bet if I chop open a sick guy's chest I can hook up a motor and probably keep him alive. Send me a hundred brown people and I'll prove it." What I'm advocating is exactly what happened -- the life-saving device was tested, proven effective, and successfully implemented with no human suffering, and the safe practice was refined over time as our understanding improved. It didn't save everybody, but it didn't kill anybody. That is a night-and-day distinction.

I am baffled as to how you do not see the flaw in this statement. First of all, his experiments on animals did not yield a 100% success rate nor anything close to it while in modern times, drugs have to yield a near 100% success rate with a low as possible risk before it is tested on humans. Isn't this the false equivalency you were talking about? It didn't save everybody, but it didn't kill anybody. And this is contradictory to what you said earlier. So patients with terminal illnesses should be allowed to offer themselves as test subjects, no? And no, I am not advocating some random doctor suggesting a mad scientist experiment. How is anything like a 90% threshold of risk comparable to that? A 90% treshhold should sound like a paradise if you were okay with the history of the heart-lung machine.

The only moral thing to do in that situation is to give you a meal for a fair price (I know, I know, you hippies reading this are saying FREE MEAL! bite me). The person taking $10k for a cheeseburger is stealing from you. That person is objectively terrible. What I've been arguing all along is that we continue to practice humane research to help people safely. And I've already linked like a handful of new treatments (just from the last couple of years) to demonstrate what should be readily apparent just from the state of the world you keep moaning about -- western medicine works. Ebola broke out in Africa, not here, and we still cured it in weeks. We're doing everything right, far as research is concerned, and the crazy part is you already implicitly recognize this by comparing the US-Africa health situations.

He is indeed a terrible person. However the point here is that if you aren't going to contribute anything to me, then don't stop that man from selling me his burger because at the end of the day no matter how horrible the deal, its still better than my current situation. Otherwise I wouldn't accept the deal and then this whole debate about forced into it would be off. And I am bringing up the many situations where how the current standard western medicine development DOESN'T work. While medical breakthroughs still occur, they are occurring at a rapidly lower rate than the past despite our increased knowledge and advances in technology. This is because of all the tape that's laid around clinical trial technicians.

Bullshit. That's exactly how it works, and if you're not already doing it, you don't actually care.

I mentioned this earlier. People care... but they don't care enough. Thats me! If I see a beggar in front of me, I'll give a few dollars but I'm not going to send funds off every month to people I will never meet in my whole life even though I feel sad for them. Besides the point isn't about me, I have no idea how you wrapped this around me. The point is that people prevent these experiments because they 'care'. Yet these people are doing close to nothing to help those they 'care' about. When ethics is brought up, people make a big hoo haa. You could get a government to do a nationwide survey and ask if support should be sent to these third world countries. I'll tell you most people would say yes, at least I believe that much in humanity at least. Then I tell you what, the government then charges them money in order to raise funds. You'll see a lot of angry people. Fucking hell, these are the people that already complain when taxes are redistributed into helping their own country people. I'm just saying people need to realize how they're being gigantic hypocrites by so strongly advocating ethics and why we should protect the rights of others.

You can't solve everything =/= you can't do anything. =/= you should just use them as lab rats instead.

People will give them money, food and healthcare in exchange for the experiments. The money, food and healthcare that people would never otherwise give for free or at least not on such a substantial level. They win because (read my response to villageidiot in this same post) and you win because you get medical breakthroughs.

What? Exactly that is 'done and implemented,' and it's because the populace is concerned about ethics. Rightly so. You have an unreasonable definition of what's 'relatively safe to the individuals,' and that's where your frustration is coming from. If you get rid of that, you'll see that the system already actually does what you want it to do, better than how you want to do it, without killing people. Stop trying to fix it with murder.

No, my frustration comes from the hypocrisy of the masses. Which I mentioned earlier in this post. Everyone raises a big fuss because they 'care'. When in reality, they don't care. My frustration is that I wanna yell out to them "hey, you don't really care so stop making yourself feel better, OTHERWISE do something that ACTUALLY shows you care! Otherwise, shut your mouth about ethics."

E: And if you somehow divert this again to it being about me. Then I will repeat it again. I care to a certain degree. And I know what that degree is. I'm not a saint nor am I devil. I'm not going to work my life away to slave for others. If you say that because of that, I have no right to argue about other people, then I can't complain. However, just read what I've typed and take it with a grain of salt before changing the topic back to me and whether or not it makes sense.

[mdk]

Let's try it this way. I'm going to summarize what I think you're saying, and you tell me if I'm wrong.

Horrible diseases need to be cured and our system doesn't let that happen. In this world there are people, mostly in in third-world countries, who are poorly off and would volunteer to subject themselves to more dangerous medical testing (with up to 90% chance of failure and 1% chance of death) in exchange for money. We should allow drug companies to pay those people to undergo potentially dangerous medical experimentation in pursuit of cures, to accelerate the process.

basically

Is that accurate? Any additions, subtractions, comments?

[Dinh AaronMk]

Never 4get.

[Dead Girl]

Do not have a problem with eugenics ... in fact ... I support it 100%. Why spend tax dollars on someone that will not produce more then what we give them in the first place. Humans are like farm animals, how much do we want to spend on the animal before we can take it to market. Case point, we society spends less on a person and that person in their lifespan produces more tax dollars: that is a model citizen. If society spends more on a person, and they only produce very little in tax dollars: someone has to pay for that in higher taxes. The best way to cut taxes, is to build gas showers like German did and burn the bodies. In the end, it is a government works program and saves in the end with lower taxes on the really need citizens.