Pharma-ethics

This is an opinion piece, and should be evaluated as such, If you do not agree that is within your right, and I encourage any questions or comments you feel inclined to pose.


There have always been serious considerations necessary when working with pharmaceuticals and science. There are as many ethical questions as there are strategic/factual ones. When is a drug or treatment safe enough for human use, how do you conduct tests to determine that, and who should receive treatment. Because of the complex nature of the human body, it is necessary that many large-scale trials occur after tedious pre-trial testing. Even after well conducted research scientists cannot have enough confidence to know that there will be no adverse results. They cannot fully anticipate long term effects a drug will have, or how all people, especially pregnant women, young children, and elderly will respond. Prior to the age of consumer safety (for the interests of this post I will claim modern standards and practices were pioneered as late as Nadar's campaign against unsafe Chevrolet's) there were few limitations on what drugs, "patent medicines" and purported miracle cures could be distributed. Many of these drugs contained narcotic or addictive substances, or toxins. These drugs were often reckless and harmful, and in some cases, pure profiteering.

The trials, have three phases prior to a drug being ready for human use, and are intended to reduce the possibility of negative effects, like birth defects. These are generally accepted as a necessity in ethical treatment. The question in the opening paragraph, of who should receive treatment, and how, is mixed in with many religious and social themes. An example of this, would be how the majority of political leaders in the United States would see condemning Euthanasia as important, where many other places would not. Asking when terminal patients should be allowed to try experimental treatment is more than a matter of denying or permitting 'treatment.' There is a misconception about the nature of experimental trials, they are generally not intended to treat patients, instead, they are meant to see first and foremost if it is safe, and the nature of side effects if there are any. Later it is determinedd if the drugs are effective, along with this is the constant struggle with money, and profiteering like what happened with the patent medicines. Because of the necessary trial phase, drug development takes a lot of time and resources, and for this reason, people considering the ethical milieu of drug treatment must consider the interest companies have in skipping the research and selling experimental medicines, ad a buyer beware status. Companies might be tempted to do this, and this would be bad, because eliminating the interest and reward for long term research, combined with the low success even for drugs in Phase 2 trials, may result in stagnation of medical research.

After watching things like "Lorenzo's Oil" and looking at similar cases, I worry what will become of ethical cases like that. I am familiar to some extent with the policies of the Bush Administration and its policies with Bioethics. I look to the Presidents' bioethics Committee, which basically is a dog show, judging whose medical science is most westernized, and conservative. They found, for example, that the Netherlands was not acting in the interests of its citizens. At most the actions of this committee will reflect on policies allowed or disallowed in our country. They use their findings as evidence to support policies here, and because of our ethnocentrism, I worry it will limit legitimate science.