From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) Subject: Re: Cassini opponents (was Re: Cassini flyby of Earth) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.astro.amateur,sci.environment,sci.med,sci.physics, sci.space.history,sci.space.policy In <EI47Ap.Kzw@midway.uchicago.edu> meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes: > >In article <622sim$oj@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>, >sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) writes: > >>In <EI2w59.9yD@midway.uchicago.edu> meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes: >> >>>I don't know about any significant medical research that's being held >>>back now for lack of money. >> >> >> Then you don't know very much. > >Your opinion. You're entitled to it, of course. Having written many biomedical research grant proposals, both successful and unsuccessful, and being involved in both medical research and (clinically) the consequences of slow research, it's a little more than just an opinion. NIH grant funding level is now at between 10 and 15%, depending on the institute. That means most grant proposals don't get funded. >> And I'm yet to see somebody who wouldn't claim that he can use more money. I suggest, though, that you compare government spending on medical research versus this on the physical sciences. Not to mention, even, the "medical innovations" that actually are the product of research in the physical sciences. Being (or at least claiming to be) an M.D. do you tend to acknowledge such lovely devices as x-ray and MRI imaging techniques, just for example (hint: they're not the product of medical research).<< Whether the physical sciences get shorted at the expense of the biomedical sciences is not the issue. The statement was that significant medical research is not being held back for lack of money. That's utter nonsense. One example: The first permanent artifical heart was implanted at my medical school, the University of Utah, 15 years ago when I was a medical student there. It failed, ultimately, because they couldn't figure out a way to keep clots from forming on the device, and the users suffered embolic strokes. Today, Wilhem Kolff, inventor of the artificial kidney and still at the U of U, has developed a number of much simpler one-piece vaccuum formed hearts made of special plastics that have clotting inhibitors built into them, something that wasn't available 15 years ago. These beautiful hearts are waiting to be tested on animals. No money is available. Meanwhile, people are dying for lack of hearts--- half a million a year in this country alone. There's no reason an artificial heart need cost more than an automobile. Batteries not included, of course. Alas, it's beginning to look like the only really efficient power source for a wearable artificial heart is a Pu-238 thermoelectric generator ala Cassini. Just to bring this around to the thread topic. Steve Harris, M.D. From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative,sci.life-extension,alt.health,sci.med, misc.headlines Subject: Re: THE REAL DRUG WAR IS VIOXX Date: 27 Jun 2005 10:56:01 -0700 Message-ID: <1119894960.956180.8150@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> >> There are also others with this belief. Some would be the families of people with less than one month to live due to impending heart failure. The Abiocore heart has been shown to extend their life expectancey by about four months. Cancer drugs have been approved with efficacy in this range, yet the artificial heart is apparently not going to be. Why not?? << COMMENT: Those cancer drugs don't cost a quarter of a million bucks. The longer answer is that even if the thing was only bought for cash by rich people, the FDA really doesn't care about the problems of a few rich people. The FDA isn't dying. It doesn't "feel your pain." Get it? Perhaps the artificial heart makers couldn't pay as much in bribes as Merck or Glaxo-Smith-Kline. Why knows? I do know that if these expensive and somewhat rickety artificial hearts are not approved at some point, they won't ever evolve the cheap device that anybody can "buy." Consider what would have happened if we'd decided that computers were just too expensive in 1952 (when there were only 2 Univacs in existance), and we'd just quit. Why then, we wouldn't be where we are today, when even small universities can afford computers :). I saw my first big plasma TV in Las Vegas about 3 years ago. No place but Vegas could afford them. Today, they are toys of the affluent. But in ten or fifteen years, there won't be a picture tube left except, in trailor parks. That's how progress WORKS. In aviation transport, in the auto industry, everywhere. But the FDA doesn't get it. The people who vote in the idiots who appoint the FDA and make its rules, don't get it. So you're going to need an artificial heart one day, and it won't be there and you're going to die of your stupidity. Welcome to the pitiless universe. It doesn't suffer fools. SBH From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative,sci.life-extension,alt.health,sci.med, misc.headlines Subject: Re: THE REAL DRUG WAR IS VIOXX Date: 27 Jun 2005 12:10:32 -0700 Message-ID: <1119899432.590609.322400@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> >>It's not that easy to make a vote that could maximize the medical progess we want to see. << COMMENT: Why isn't it easy? You let the people with the problem and the market decide. Did some giant frigging government agency make the decissions that led to the "progress we want to see" that gave us all cheap cellphones, digiital watches, computers, color TVs, DVD movies, camcorders, and so on? NO. All that was necessary is they got out of the way. I remember the first Amana Radar Range microwave ovens. They were dinosaurs and expensive as hell. Just like the first $400 calculators and digital watches. Nobody could afford them. But a few months ago I bought a Chinese made microwave oven at Target for $30 and it works just great. There is NO reason whatsoever that medical progress cannot be as fast, since we spend even more on healthcare than we do on consummer electronics. We are held back merely by cowardice, stupidity, denial, ignorance, and lack of empathy for people who need the medical technology at the moment (while we happen---(briefly---to be healthy). All of these qualities which the average voter and lawmaker and regulator has in abundance. SBH From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative,sci.life-extension,alt.health,sci.med, misc.headlines Subject: Re: THE REAL DRUG WAR IS VIOXX Date: 28 Jun 2005 08:05:14 -0700 Message-ID: <1119971114.602940.43300@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> >>I see this as more of a financial rather than medical question, and that the FDA should have confined its participation to the latter. << COMMENT: And yet the two are inextricably intertwined. The Wright Brothers hadn't been flying for more than 7 years before they killed a passenger in 1908. How long before the airplane would became "safe and effective."? Can you imagine of the FDA had been involved? I doubt we'd be past wooden biplanes yet. And yet people don't HAVE to fly. We do have to have medical advances, though, or we die just doing nothing. Millions of us a year, just in my own country. You see the problem? SBH |
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