[panabee]

the FDA face an unenviable challenge: how to promote healthcare innovation without endangering patients?

regulations that are too loose may cause suffering and death while regulations that are too strict will delay or block prevent helpful treatments.

regulating healthcare is extremely difficult and largely a thankless job.

one solution is to approach national healthcare like national security and let people volunteer for treatments like volunteering for the army.

in short, overstate risks but let patients decide.

adopt cigarette-simple consent forms that state in bold words that an experimental treatment is likely to cause death or crippling side-effects like paralysis, blindness, stroke, Alzheimer's, or worse.

perhaps require multiple signatories from family members to guard against irrational behavior.

this protects the FDA while minimizing barriers to innovative therapies and treatments.

[londons_explore]

> in short, overstate risks but let patients decide.

Then you have to battle the people selling highly marked up snake oil as an 'experimental' treatment - when every expert could tell you this treatment is already well known to be ineffective.

[lelanthran]

> Then you have to battle the people selling highly marked up snake oil as an 'experimental' treatment - when every expert could tell you this treatment is already well known to be ineffective.

Isn't that easily solved by requiring all experimental drugs and procedures to be provided free of charge with the cost footed solely by the provider?

[panabee]

indeed. this is a thorny problem with no perfect solution.

on the one hand, you may throttle promising treatments and on the other hand, you may increase useless treatments.

publishing results is one way to mitigate snake oil, though this obviously doesn't eliminate the problem.

the general framework is to maximize transparency and freedom.

letting people volunteer for national healthcare like they can for the national army increases freedom, but we must also increase transparency to combat snake oil.

[dantheman]

Anyone should be allowed to take any medicine that they desire. The FDA can still approve treatments, the problem with the FDA is that forbid patients from access to treatment they desire.