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Jake Seliger has died

marginalrevolution.com

41–50 of 220 posts

Re: Jake Seliger has died

#45
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't think the answer is let terminal patients take whatever they feel like. I don't think anyone has the moral authority to tell anyone else what they can take, especially terminal patients. I do, however think governments have a responsibility to regulate how drug companies conduct trials so as to minimize harm to patients. This probably has the same outcome in practice, but I find the moral distinction im…

I don't think it's just that. Imagine the kind of money the more unscrupulous could make selling sugar pills for $100 each saying that it's the cure for whatever is killing you. Desperation can cloud even the most rational of minds.

"Sugar Pills"

Yeah it happens a lot more than you think - the entire everything - about USA pharma is absolute evil.

I've pissed off a lot of people in my statements about how chemists are a very unscrupulous profession, and many are downright evil. (you need to really learn about the history of Sandoz, Bayer, Novartis, Du Pont, J&J, Monsanto, and all the others.... Watch the Devil We Know, for example about Teflon

https://i.imgur.com/vGIcL0d.png

--- [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/09/12/heres-wh...

Re: Jake Seliger has died

#46
What happens to his hacker News account? What about email account, cloud servers, etc ...?

I know Google has a nice tool to share your account after you are gone, as for the rest, I have no plans.

Anyone has good suggestions on managing one's own digital legacy?

Re: Jake Seliger has died

#48
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't think the answer is let terminal patients take whatever they feel like. I don't think anyone has the moral authority to tell anyone else what they can take, especially terminal patients. I do, however think governments have a responsibility to regulate how drug companies conduct trials so as to minimize harm to patients. This probably has the same outcome in practice, but I find the moral distinction im…

I don't think it's just that. Imagine the kind of money the more unscrupulous could make selling sugar pills for $100 each saying that it's the cure for whatever is killing you. Desperation can cloud even the most rational of minds.

If I recall correctly, that is why it is illegal for clinical trials to charge for experimental and unapproved medication. The patient's "payment" is in taking the risk, and the 'pay-off' towards the experimenter is that it helps get their drug approved to a saleable state, if it works. That part sounds like a good ethical system design to avoid perverse incentives - the drug maker doesn't gain anything unless it works and even then it is indirectly.

Re: Jake Seliger has died

#49
post #20

Jake's wife on FDA deregulation https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-...

I've experienced this from both sides. First with my father who was dying of cancer and was informed that while some promising treatments were in trials, he was not eligible. Balancing potential harm from unapproved drugs vs. certain death within 12 months feels like an easy task. On the other side, my wife worked for a mid-sized pharma in the past. After several rounds of trials that each cost tens of millions of do…

Part of the harm is in people no longer trusting drugs. We're very fortunate to be able to get prescribed a drug and have certainty the risk-reward tradeoffs have been evaluated to extreme depth by experts far more equipped than we are.

Re: Jake Seliger has died

#50
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just that. Imagine the kind of money the more unscrupulous could make selling sugar pills for $100 each saying that it's the cure for whatever is killing you. Desperation can cloud even the most rational of minds.

People selling stuff are in the same category as the drug companies; I have no objection to regulating them, and imprisoning them for fraud, with an enhanced penalty for preying on particularly vulnerable people in the case you described.

How exactly are you going to prove fraud without, you know, the clinical trial data that you've just allowed them not to produce in the first place?

Fraud is one risk -- the much bigger one is well-intentioned people trying to save lives seeing positive outcomes where there aren't any.

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