[thefounder]

They know the consequences of not trying any risky/experimental treatment: death.

I know people willing to become guinea pigs for non-life threatening conditions (i.e back pain).

It's clear that the current approach to develop new treatments/drugs that requires billions and years or even decades of tests is not fast enough for many people.

[jimrhods23]

With the amount of lawsuits in the US for people that are willingly harming themselves or abusing drugs: Cigarette companies still getting sued for smokers dying of cancer..even though it's been known for 50 years that it causes cancer and Big Pharma getting sued for the Opiod crises means that this will never happen here until we have major tort reform and an assurance that a company can't be sued in any court if someone dies as a result of taking untested treatments.

"It's clear that the current approach to develop new treatments/drugs that requires billions and years or even decades of tests is not fast enough for many people"

It takes years of testing because the risk if health or death is too great. It's foolish to think that allowing anyone to be a human guinea pig for untested/unfinished treatments will result in any less deaths or suffering from a terminal illness.

[jimrhods23]

It feels weird that I have to argue for safety and the scientific process in a forum for supposed intelligent people.

It's very anti-intellectual.

[plutonorm]

Imagine that you have a 99.99 chance of death. There is treatment that appears to work in 50% of people, but it's early days, it's only been tried on 10 people. What do you do? Do you want a bear certain probability of death or a 50% chance of a cure? I think it is entirely proper to allow people with the money to pay for it, to take that gamble. It's their life, not ours. It's their money, not ours. Sure, we need to be sure that the correct data is presented to the client, they mustn't be mis-sold. But otherwise I have no issue with people being free to take a gamble. I would absolutely furious if this chance for life was withheld from me. And so would you be.

[thefounder]

Intelligent people understand what a trade-off is. Testing experimental and potential risky treatments on humans does not make it less scientific.

These people will die anyway and most of them prefer to die fighting or at least knowing that someone might benefit(i.e their children) if a treatment is found.

It is both the human and scientific thing to do for them.