| > And that's before we even factor money - and financial harm not just to the patient but to their family and loved ones - into the picture. This can't be a serious argument when the ordinary medical establishment is the thing wiping out the bank accounts of anyone who gets seriously sick, regardless of whether or not it cures them. If people are facing death and they have money, they're going to throw the money at attempts to not die, one way or the other. > So now you're looking at 1% effective outcomes vs 10-20% harmful outcomes. But in this case the 10-20% harmful outcomes are in the nature of "you still died but maybe a little bit sooner" whereas the 1% effective outcomes are that you would have died and instead you didn't and lived another 50 years. If I have two months to live and there's a button I can press that has a 99% chance of making it one month and a 1% chance of making it 50 years, I'm smashing that button with no regrets. You're also assuming we have no mechanism for detecting scams. But we do. Professionals go to school to learn science and that allows them to detect bullshit. If a substance is supposed to work against cancer by inhibiting cell growth and it's the sort of thing that could plausibly do that, it might not be a cure for cancer but it might be worth the attempt if you're going to die anyway. If a substance is supposed to work against cancer by mechanism of the astrology of Capricorn, that's a load of bullocks. So then the patient can ask a scientist they trust if the thing has any plausible mechanism of action before they waste their time or money on it. Some of them may still be fools, but not all of them. Especially when the ones who aren't fools are the ones who are more likely to not die, which is the sort of thing otherwise-apathetic people tend to care about. Moreover, in general "we have to kill some diligent people to keep some idiots from wasting their money" is not a sympathetic argument. |