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Thu, Apr 03
Cute With A Good Story: Social Media Selects Experimental Subjects
For patients with a serious illness, accessing cutting edge drugs has just taken a new turn. In the past, a patient with cancer would undergo conventional treatments. If that failed, then he or she would be considered for a clinical trial of a new drug that may (or may not) have the potential to affect the disease. Entry into trials is strict with controls for potential subjects’ age, sex, type and stage of cancer, treatments already tried, and more. And trials are limited in size. Depending on the type of trial the researchers are looking for safety, efficacy, side effects, or dosing. Keeping the numbers of subjects low ensures that fewer people will be harmed if the drug is found to be dangerous. This is one reason why we test new medications. At least, that’s how it worked until now. In 2014, the way to get access to experimental drugs is to shame the company into giving them to you. Read more.