[ncann]

> I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see desperate, sick, rich people try this out on themselves, skipping FDA approval

I know nothing about the FDA but for things like terminal cancer treatment, shouldn't there be a blanket exemption for "if the patient so wish, they can take whatever drugs they want even if unapproved"? When facing certain death, what's the worst that can happen? You die a bit sooner?

[adebiase44]

There is compassionate use: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/making-treatme....

[thatguy0900]

The worst that can happen is a industry springing up around giving terminally ill scared desperate people suger pills at a 10000% markup

[mrguyorama]

The concern isn't about killing people already dying of cancer, but rather allowing literal snake oil salesmen to target people dying of cancer and ready to extract all possible wealth from dying people.

[ska]

There sort of is, in a couple of ways. First, off-label use. This is very common in medicine, and means drug X (or machine X) approved for Y purpose can be used for Z purpose if a physician judges it a good idea. So if a heart drug is showing promise in treating sleep apnea in early papers, your doctor could read the papers and decide it was worth a go. Or if you asked them to; trick there is they are professionally liable for it being a supportable decision. There is a form of this for compassionate use which means most of the downsides are ignored in favor of quality of life (e.g. I'm not too worried about getting you addicted to opiods if you're only going to live a few weeks).

The second way is that drugs/devices are considered against their intended use. So the argument for using more dangerous things is much easier if you are treating brain tumors than common colds. There even are fast-track (e.g. mRNA vaccine for covid) but won't be pulled out for niche uses.

What this doesn't cover is things produced in uncontrolled ways, or "i read this on the internet and want a prescription". I can see how this is frustrating for people who are willing to try anything, but I can also see the liability side.

> "When facing certain death, what's the worst that can happen? You die a bit sooner?"

Part of the problem is you certainly can make things worse, and you can make them systemically more expensive. It's one thing to say "I'm dying anyway and I want to try this" but quite another to add "and if it goes badly I expect you to try and deal with it". No easy answers, really.

[entropicdrifter]

The illegal part wouldn't be putting the chems into your body, but selling or giving such chems to someone when you know they're planning to ingest them

[tough]

It seems like a great way to allow a system that it's known to exploit desperate people to do so selling all kinds of miraculous treatments that don't have to even have a relic of science on them.

Having cancer already sucks enough, having businesses and whatnot vulturing over your condition to sell you shit that doesn't work wouldn't really make it better?