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by BobbyJo 1126 days ago
If I did drug trials for pain killers this way, would it give any useful data?

Depression and pain are subjective. Personally, I think removing the subjectivity from the trial voids the trial. It is a clever design, but it really just proves the benefit is in the experience and not the physical mechanism.
2 comments
cubefox 1126 days ago
Having amnesia (forgetting whether they had a trip and whether they were in the treatment group) would probably be better than anesthesia induced unconsciousness. Though I don't know whether short term amnesia can be easily induced.
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vorpalhex 1126 days ago
Pain has subjective parts but it is not merely subjective. You can measure how much effect ibuprofen or tylenol has, even with someone knocked out. You can see pain on an mri, even with someone knocked out.
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BobbyJo 1125 days ago
Never heard that before, source?

Also, anesthesia would ruin whatever you hoped to see on an MRI.

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vorpalhex 1121 days ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5019436/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17512757/

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operatingthetan 1125 days ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding context, but my cat may need an MRI and I've learned it's standard in all veterinary medicine to use anesthesia for scans in order to keep the patients immobile.
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BobbyJo 1124 days ago
Yeah, but they aren't trying to watch the effect of a drug happening. Anesthesia is accomplished with drugs. You can't give a person 3 different drugs, then expect a brain scan to tell you how one works in isolation.
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