@OP you should reach out to my local University and its Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) here in PEI, Canada. https://www.upei.ca/avc/research
Do you have any connections there, by any chance? Always looking to talk to more vets.
I'm making drugs for cats
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#52Damn I thought he'd be working on like, cat Ecstasy or something.
Getting Ecstasy to market involves fewer regulatory hurdles than even drugs for animals. It just so happens to be illegal in most countries.
I thought he'd be doing "this drug is for cats" wink wink and then people use it, but in retrospect a judge would see right through that.
I wonder if it would be significantly cheaper to go through regulatory approvals for a drug in another country, to the point where it would be worthwhile to relocate the company?
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#53My beloved calico who passed away near the beginning of the pandemic suffered from stomatitis. I opted for full dental extraction after pharmaceutical intervention proved ineffective. She eventually passed away from an aggressive mouth cancer, which is not uncommon in cats with stomatitis. I loved that cat, she got me through grad school, and losing her was miserable. My gratitude to anyone working on stomatitis trea…
aggressive mouth cancer?
my calico ten years ago succumbed to a horrible oral bone cancer's complications.
to hell with cancer, and it's kinda retarded (literal meaning of the word) how slowly progress is made.
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that's a huge problem. All our doctors (Eastern EU here) are leaving for UK, US, or richer western EU countries. To resolve that, we have a law that requires newly graduate doctors to stay and work here for a long time (10 years here IIRC), which is rightly seen as a serious issue wrt. their personal freedom. That pushes people away from pursuing medical degrees. It's cheaper, but that has its price too.
> All our doctors (Eastern EU here) are leaving for UK, US, or richer western EU countries To be fair. That's true of educated people in general, not just doctors.
I can't fully agree. I think the situation is much better than it used to be and is improving, for example IT workers are not universally leaving anymore, a lot of them now stay and there are many foreign people coming here! There is now an exciting startup sector too, and the international corporations are finally building IT hubs here. But it keeps getting worse in the medical sector because of that law and because it's not paid well enough given the long hours and stress.
Nowadays, older doctors (those who have served their 10 years) are moving from insurance-based to cash-based treatment because they demand much more than the "pricing tables" dictate - so there's a lot of doctors around you, but you can't go to them because the "public" insurance can be used only where they accept it, they never give you cash. The prices are very similar to US hospital quotes - in absolutes, not PPP. Meanwhile, we still have the "public" healthcare providers (these are corporations, but usually wholly or partially owned by political entities), but the quality is getting worse, they are unable to keep it stable, much less improve - not surprising since they rely on essentially forced labor.
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, they have to do this. The cost of a few bad drug approvals that cause large-scale loss of confidence in the pharma industry would be devastating- including consequential effects on good medications.
> Yes, they have to do this. We can imagine lots of alternatives to what the FDA currently does - a partial approval pipeline immediately comes to mind in which the degree to which a drug is approved is commensurate to our confidence in the safety/efficacy of the drug. A different system could have different levels of approval on efficacy and safety. A different system could attempt to maximize lives saved (or utilit…
There are a lot of different approaches that could be taken that would definitely be more effective in the short term and I too wish we could take the most effective and logical approach. The problem is people are not always logical, especially on a large scale.
A proposal like you mentioned puts a lot of trust in the general public to be capable of making informed decisions based on detailed approval levels and risk profiles and not react to negative outcomes or side effects by blaming the FDA, pharmaceutical science, or the medical field.
It feels like putting that kind of complication into something as important and life affecting as pharmaceuticals is just asking for trouble when we live in a world where the grades for maple syrup needed to be simplified and large numbers of people think the President has direct control of gas prices.
Especially in the age of social media, it only takes a small increase in the number of people reacting illogically and lashing out to snowball, create loud counter narratives, and threaten the view of the FDA as a trusted authority and its ability to provide strong oversight. The result being increasing numbers of people harmed because they chose to avoid care or seek out sham alternative treatments.
We can already see these issues cropping up with regard to things like vaccines where factors like COVID vaccines being rolled out under early approval (an unfortunately necessary special case) has hurt public perception of the FDA.
The unhappy fact is that any approach that does not take into account the need to protect people from themselves, make efforts to minimize bad PR, and ensure the FDA appears as completely as possible to never make mistakes will result in an erosion of trust and even worse outcomes in the long term.
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#56Just wanted to leave a plea for someone, anyone, to please start working on FeLV and FIV vaccines. Cats normally live 16 years. FeLV/FIV takes them at age 2 or 3. It happened to both of mine. Not only is it common, but it's often assumed that it'll happen. It seems almost lucky when cats don't get it. If an epidemic like that were affecting humans, a trillion dollars would be spent to fight it. But since it's cats, w…
I’m sorry to hear both your cats passed away at age 2-3. Can I ask whether the cats were infected with FeLV or FIV? FIV cats can often live a relatively long life (~10 years) if kept indoors. Whereas the median lifespan for a FeLV positive cat is 3 years from the date of diagnosis.
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#57Damn I thought he'd be working on like, cat Ecstasy or something.
That's called 'catnip' :)
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#58I have a quasi-thought experiment for fellow HN readers.
If you found out one of the stray cats at unofficial “cat shelter” tested positive for FeLV and the person who runs the “cat shelter” seems oblivious to it, would you consider unethical to let the person continue run it? The FeLV virus is likely to spread among all the cats and result in a short life of suffering and illness.
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#59I have a quasi-thought experiment for fellow HN readers. If you found out one of the stray cats at unofficial “cat shelter” tested positive for FeLV and the person who runs the “cat shelter” seems oblivious to it, would you consider unethical to let the person continue run it? The FeLV virus is likely to spread among all the cats and result in a short life of suffering and illness.
So is this a variation on the trolley problem or something ?
How many cats are we talking about ?
Re: I'm making drugs for cats
#60I have a quasi-thought experiment for fellow HN readers. If you found out one of the stray cats at unofficial “cat shelter” tested positive for FeLV and the person who runs the “cat shelter” seems oblivious to it, would you consider unethical to let the person continue run it? The FeLV virus is likely to spread among all the cats and result in a short life of suffering and illness.
If you can't get them to vaccinate the other cats, then yes