
Dying for Science: Historical Perspectives on Research Participants’ Deaths - DiabloD3
http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html
======
AdamN
The actual article. The Discover Magazine synopsis doesn't meet Hacker News
calibre:

[http://journalofethics.ama-
assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html](http://journalofethics.ama-
assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html)

~~~
dang
Thanks. URL changed from
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/12/29/ma...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/12/29/martyrs-
science-research-participants/).

------
reasonattlm
The other, largely ignored and much, much larger population of martyrs are
those who died due to the growing excess of precaution and cost slowing down
the development and use of new medicine. E.g. see:

[http://fdareview.org/](http://fdareview.org/)

The cost of regulatory burdens on medicine in the US has doubled in real terms
in the past ten years.

[http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014...](http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014_cost_study)

Much of that these days is political, driven by bureaucrats in the FDA and
elsewhere whose career advancement depends of creating no news. Their every
incentive is to suppress progress, because they are rewarded with bigger
budgets when there is no new medicine, and punished when anything ever goes
wrong and the media happens to seize upon it. No medicine is without risk.
Every medical technology is involved in deaths. But successful clinical
application saves lives and increases health to a much greater degree.

So long as people have choice, they should have the choice to risk themselves
in the development of better medicine.

~~~
jcadam
This ridiculous, almost(?) cowardly aversion to any and all risk is a growing
problem with all government agencies (at all levels), not just the FDA.

