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Experts Decry Randomized Ebola Treatment Trials As Unethical, Impractical
New submitter Strangely Familiar writes "A letter in the Lancet calls for alternatives to randomized trials for Ebola treatments: "Leading health experts today urge the deployment of alternative trial designs to fast-track the evaluation of new Ebola treatments. In a letter to The Lancet, 17 senior health professionals and medical ethicists, from Africa, Europe, and USA, argue that although randomised controlled trials (RCTs) provide robust evidence in most circumstances, the lack of effective treatment options for Ebola, high mortality with the current standard of care, and the paucity of effective health care systems in the affected regions means that alternative trial designs need to be considered."
Seriously, starting to experiment with uncertain approaches in a time of crisis is about the most stupid thing that can be done. Stick to what is known to work, there is no time to come up with anything better. If something better had been found in centuries of research into medical methods, then it would be the standard-approach. There is nothing. There will not be anything new even if you debate that question to death now.
This continues the series of incompetence, misinformation, self-aggrandizement and general fuck-ups that have become the signature of the fight against Ebola this time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But randomized trials were designed to be used in a certain set of circumstances. The question is whether these circumstances fall outside of what those would be applicable to and what would be the appropriate protocol if they're not. Being too rigid can be a bad thing but also things should not be done in a knee-jerk fashion.
Any more meaningless generalities to contribute? The field is not static or rigid. The problem is just that generating and validating new drug-trial methods takes decades and cannot really be sped-up. The whole reason we have this gold-standard of randomized trials is that all else has failed. The worst was always the physician on the ground deciding about it, as they have a strong, well-known (and understandable) tendency to always favor their own patients and an inability to clearly see what is happening as a result. That is fine as it is, of course doctors should be strong allies to their patients and try whatever is possible if the patient wants that. It is also catastrophic when objective information about effectiveness or its absence of some treatment is critically needed. All this messing around that these people propose will in the end only cause more victims, potentially a lot more.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Context - what's actually on the rise in Scandinavia at the moment is Nazism. So far, the fight against it has been a rather ham-fisted attempt to suppress it in the news, rather than engaging it and letting people see for themselves what it is. OP apparently sympathises with the rise of the far right in his country.