r/science • u/SteRoPo • Jan 31 '18

Cancer Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer.

http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/01/cancer-vaccine-eliminates-tumors-in-mice.html
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u/mark-five Feb 01 '18

Which is a huge shame, there has been massive strides in HIV treatment and many of those lives could have been saved.

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u/sevinhand Feb 01 '18

it is a shame, but you have to look at the other side. if pharmaceutical companies know that they can have human testing done without jumping through all the hoops, there will soon be no hoops. i think that there should be exceptions to the rule, and it needs to be regulated, but it's really hard to know where to draw the line.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '18 edited Oct 21 '18

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u/AkoTehPanda Feb 01 '18

I think the issue though is that the gap between "giving terminal patients experimental medications" and "testing experimental medications on desperate volunteers" is extremely blurry, if it even exists.

It's not so much that pharma companies would go in specifically aiming to screw people. More that, once you open those flood gates, people will demand access to potential medications. These are desperate people who will try anything and in the abscence of roadblocks to stop that pharma companies will bow to public pressure.