

MyTomorrows Raises €4.5M to Give Patients Access to Development-Stage Drugs - koos303
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/07/right-to-try/

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grabcocque
Give patients unregulated access to under-tested, possibly lethal, drugs?

What could go wrong?

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Multics
There's obviously potential downside, but for people with serious illnesses
there's potential upside.

For example: If you've got a disease that's going to kill you and unlikely
helped by current medication/therapies, then dying a bit early is a small
downside, not dying for however many more decades, on the other hand, is a
huge upside.

In this case, the upside/downside is asymmetrical in _favour_ of the upside!
It would be logical to take 'under-tested, possibly lethal, drugs'.

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DanBC
> not dying for however many more decades, on the other hand, is a huge
> upside.

Looking at modern controversial cancer drugs we see that people get maybe six
months of extra life, at very great expense, and these are the good drugs. The
not so good drugs are even more expensive and provide perhaps two weeks extra
life.

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Multics
I agree! Current drugs aren't very effective, and there is a lot of room for
upside in future therapies.

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DanBC
You missed the point that the very best newest cancer drugs are really
expensive and if they're good give you an extra six months of life, and if
they're not good give you perhaps an extra fortnight of low quality life.

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jpwise
Here are my thoughts ( VC @ Balderton ) on why we invested, for what it's
worth: [https://medium.com/@jp_wise/the-hard-thing-about-hard-
things...](https://medium.com/@jp_wise/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things-in-
healthtech-66b0d37b428a)

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sfrank2147
I don't understand how a startup will help here. The problem is regulatory
hurdles (good or bad): there are laws that prevent patients from buying
medicine before it's been thoroughly vetted. Will this company lobby to change
those laws? Or is this an Uber situation where the fact that it's a VC-funded
startup means that regulations magically don't apply.

