Protecting ourselves to death. This article's about consent requirements, which for the unconscious can delay treatment hours and worsen prognosis. And also that ethics panel makes trials difficult to organize, so new medicines are delayed.
The article doesn't mention it (since it is about the UK) but it the US the FDA takes unapproved drugs from the sick. For example in the 80's when aids victims brought dextran sulfate back from Japan, the FDA seized it at the border. This didn't stop until 88 when the drug was proven to work (at least up to FDA standards, costing millions of dollars and years after other countries had done).
Everybody wants to ensure medicine is ethically tested and safe, but that means some will die waiting. Mary Ruwart (a doctor and also a leading candidate for the libertarian party's presidential nominee in 2008) has written on this subject: http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap6.html.
The article doesn't mention it (since it is about the UK) but it the US the FDA takes unapproved drugs from the sick. For example in the 80's when aids victims brought dextran sulfate back from Japan, the FDA seized it at the border. This didn't stop until 88 when the drug was proven to work (at least up to FDA standards, costing millions of dollars and years after other countries had done).
Everybody wants to ensure medicine is ethically tested and safe, but that means some will die waiting. Mary Ruwart (a doctor and also a leading candidate for the libertarian party's presidential nominee in 2008) has written on this subject: http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap6.html.