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French Drug Trial Leaves One Brain Dead and Five Critically Ill (theguardian.com)

jones_supa writes: One person is brain dead and five others are seriously ill after taking part in a phase one drug trial for an unnamed pharmaceutical firm at the Biotrial clinic in France. In medicine, phase one entails a small group of volunteers, and focuses only on safety. Phase two and three are progressively larger trials to assess the drug's effectiveness, although safety remains paramount. The French health ministry said the six patients had been in good health until taking the oral medication. It did not say what the new medicine was intended to be used for, but a source close to the case told AFP that the drug was a painkiller containing cannabinoids, an active ingredient found in cannabis plants. Mishaps like this are relatively rare, but in 2006 six men fell ill in London after taking part in a clinical trial into a drug developed to fight auto-immune disease and leukaemia. All trials on the drug at the French clinic have been suspended and the state prosecutor has opened an inquiry.

232 comments

  1. Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Waiting for all the morons to blame cannabis. It's Friday, work's done, I'm stoned. Love you all x

    1. Re:Naughty cannabis by Fwipp · · Score: 5, Informative

      The article clarifies:

      Touraine said the drug was meant to act on the body’s endocannabinoid system, which deals with pain. Earlier reports had suggested that the drug contained cannabinoids, an active ingredient found in cannabis plants, but the minister said it did not contain the drug or any derivatives of it.

    2. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The test subjects just need some snacks and a nap. I hope they are having the happiest of dreams if the condition isn't reversible.

    3. Re:Naughty cannabis by cayenne8 · · Score: 1, Funny
      Why not just let people consume the plant pretty much in its natural state?

      That's been proven SAVE for centuries....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    4. Re:Naughty cannabis by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

      It appears to alter the subject's ability to spell simple words, even when the word is emboldened and all caps.

    5. Re:Naughty cannabis by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Informative
      Also reported in the NY Times:

      Contrary to several reports in the French news media, the drug was not a cannabis-based painkiller, Ms. Touraine said.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    6. Re:Naughty cannabis by OakDragon · · Score: 2

      Simple misunderstanding. It wasn't a cannabis based drug, it was cannibal based.

    7. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Original AC here. You kind of proved my point - I can read perfectly well thanks but you know as well as I do what will happen and how people selectively misuse data.

    8. Re:Naughty cannabis by orledrat · · Score: 5, Informative

      Endocannabinoid system is modulated by more than just THC, CBD and the regular ol' cannabinoids in ganja. It's a rather complex system whose functional mappings and tructure-activity relationships are not very well understood.. yet. It offers incredible potential for modulation, far beyond what cannabis can do, and I for one welcome our Pharma Overlords to throw their resources at these problems.. provided that they don't botch things up like this, for fucks sake.

    9. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It does NIT!!! That's a LAY!!!

    10. Re:Naughty cannabis by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

      LOL...yep, need to start reviewing before hitting submit...

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    11. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Peace dude, wish I could be there with you. Cannabis has never killed anyone who knows anything about cannabis until the medical industry tried to pull stupid shit. Cannabis needs to be heated and inhaled or processed to an edible and consumed. The few stories about someone doing something stupid and dying after consuming cannabis are only because they were overly paranoid because it is so ingrained in people's heads that cannabis is taboo. If they truly had it in their head that there is nothing wrong with consuming cannabis, then they wouldn't have freaked out and killed themselves.

    12. Re:Naughty cannabis by cyberchondriac · · Score: 2

      Now you just sound kinda Scottish. Which is cool.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    13. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, a form of patent-pending poison designed to simulate some of cannabis' good properties while providing all the usual side-effects and benefits of a drug. Benefits are defined as huge profits to the drug company who produced it.
       
        People have been making this shit for years. Surprising it hasn't received the bad press it deserves. If Bial had done the trials by coercing children in a shitty south American country a la GlaxoSmithKline the fines might have been only $17k per death.
       
      It's like the idiots eating Aquabounty salmon, Aspartame and GMO corn instead of natural food that's been tested for safety in the real world for millions of years. You can't improve on marijuana.

    14. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's been proven SAVE [sic] for centuries....

      Try millennia... at least 12,000 years of human consumption.

    15. Re:Naughty cannabis by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Not all cannabinoids are THC. In fact There is a whole market for synthetic cannabinoids as legal substitutes for marijuana, most of them much more dangerous than the real thing and usually made illegal as they gain popularity.
      Additionally, because THC is a well known natural substance, it is not patentable and the pharmaceutical industry doesn't like it. Should they make a drug containing cannabinoids, they are more likely to use a molecule that can be patented.

    16. Re:Naughty cannabis by dkman · · Score: 1

      Que the zombie-pocalypse. Brains...

      --
      I refuse to sign
    17. Re:Naughty cannabis by CodeArtisan · · Score: 1

      It only sounds kinda Scottish if your stoned.

    18. Re:Naughty cannabis by msobkow · · Score: 1

      As with all synthetic cannabis, side-effects may include death... :(

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    19. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Waiting for all the morons to blame cannabis. It's Friday, work's done, I'm stoned. Love you all x

      One day you'll also blame it, fool.

    20. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why not just let people consume the plant pretty much in its natural state?

      Because that the endocannabinoid system can't be fully manipulated in all ways possible by just using naturally occurring stashes of THC.

      The brain contains two primary receptors (CB1 and CB2) and a few minor G protein receptors as the trigger points of the endocannabinoid system.
      The remainder of that system is the parts of the brain that generate THC to fill those receptors.

      The system as a whole has a cascading effect on things in the brain everywhere from pain control to required memory forming processes to mood control.

      Cannabis as found in plants is of forms not generated in the brain, and typically only stimulate one of the two major receptors, and rarely the G protein receptors at all.

      From those that enjoy THC use recreationally, CB1 stimulation manifests as a "sleepy relaxed pain-killing high" where CB2 stimulation manifests as a "creativity and energy boost high"
      But other than various amounts of receptor stimulation and thus various "how high" levels, you don't get much more out of it than that.

      There are fully synthetic versions of chemicals designed specifically to stimulate both CB1 and CB2 (sometimes completely) as well as designed to hit the G protein receptors in various ways and by various methods.
      These chemicals are usually called "THC equivalents" but the vast majority are anything but equivalent when looking at what they do and how they go about doing it in comparison to natural THC.

      Did you know if you stimulate CB2 at 95%+, CB1 at anything over 50%, and block GPR18 uptake from the brains natural sources, you can induce a full sensory pathway failure for a few minutes?

      The chemical JWH-210 was designed to do just this, and in effect causes a 10-15 minute "trapped in" coma with all the effects of sensory deprivation and decoupling the differentiation between sensory input and your memories of past sensory input.
      The recreational crowd usually describes this as forced lucid dreaming.

      The chemical AM-2232 stimulates CB1 partially and completely overloads CB2 beyond 100%, while also doing "something" to the Ki receptors previously thought unrelated to THC usage.
      It has been described as "Imagine the highest high you have had, and multiply that by a hundred. Once you are high enough, keep going because it doesn't stop there"

      The idea of AM was to provide pain control on the level of opiates, but without the dependency and withdraw issues opiates have. That part didn't quite work out in earlier versions of the chemical however (the withdraws were quite different from opiates, but there were still withdraws) and the chemical made a schedule 1 banned substance before further research could be done.

      None of this is possible to obtain from THC in naturally growing plants.
      The brain is much more complex than that, and can be "hacked" in many more ways and combinations using chemicals designed for that explicit purpose that have no naturally occurring equal.

      If you'd like to kill a couple days with further reading, I submit to you the following research:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWH-018
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JWH_cannabinoids
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AM_cannabinoids

    21. Re:Naughty cannabis by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      You really think that facts mean anything when it comes to drug hysteria? C'mon, how long have you been around?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    22. Re:Naughty cannabis by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Now where's the money in that?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    23. Re:Naughty cannabis by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

      Weed is for the devil, so let's make a synthetic version we don't really know anything about and see what happens! After all, the effects of marijuana have never been studied and are a complete unknown. Right?

      --
      Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
    24. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It only sounds kinda Scottish if your stoned

      It only sounds kinda Scottish if your stoned...friend says it?

      Go on, please finish the sentence.

    25. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It won't help because you're a faggot.

      OMGROFLOLWTFBBQBFF!!!!11

    26. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, when prohibition goes away some of the cultural mystique that makes the smoke something special will also go away. It could end up being just like chocolate or caffiene.

    27. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      at least 12,000 years of human consumption

      [citation needed]

    28. Re:Naughty cannabis by Holi · · Score: 1

      ABC, CBS, Bloomberg, Daily Mail, Verge, and many more have all reported incorrectly that it was a cannabis based drug.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    29. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One day, one of you might lend me your crystal ball...

    30. Re:Naughty cannabis by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up please.

      Also don't forget about the HU series as well. HU-210 and JWH-018 were the primary chemicals in the "old" Spice before the DEA cracked down on HU-210. Spice was reformulated.

      Several JWH chemicals were still available then for a while longer, then the DEA cracked down. Spice was reformulated again.

      The Spice you, dear reader, probably read about in the news contained the chemicals from the AM series, and it sent people to the hospital. That time laws were made.

      Horray big government! Sending people to the hospital and killing them and enriching drug lords (both the kinds with guns and the kinds with MDs) instead of just letting us have the perfectly safe plant for our own quiet enjoyment! The cannabis must flow!

    31. Re: Naughty cannabis by Holi · · Score: 1

      Except it has been widely reported, albeit incorrectly, as a cannabis based drug because news outlets no longer verify information and just reprint what others say.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    32. Re:Naughty cannabis by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It offers incredible potential for modulation, far beyond what cannabis can do, and I for one welcome our Pharma Overlords to throw their resources at these problems.. provided that they don't botch things up like this, for fucks sake.

      That's great in the meantime I wish we could get nice legal packaged THC/CBD products to market. Its clear of the centuries (maybe longer) of not exactly controlled application of these compounds on human test subjects they are pretty darn safe, and at least not chemically habit forming. They are also at least somewhat effective in many people with a wide variety of chronic pain conditions.

      Meanwhile our various overloads continue pushing a condition where the widely available strong pain killers are opiate. Which are highly habit forming, tend to negative side effects for the liver and kidneys when over used and have a much much narrower therapeutic dose than THC/CBD. So we have all kinds of people over dosing on them all the gwad damn time, others becoming addicts and shifting to their street drug relatives when they can no longer get them and subsequently over dosing on those. In short the irrational resistance to cannabis is killing lots of people.

      As a libertarian I am generally in support of letting people do what they want. Letting a doctor prescribe medical cannabis is a no brainier. I have some reservations about it being totally legal for recreational use although I lean in favor; at the vary least it should be fully decriminalized. Being caught with or even selling weed should be like getting a parking ticket.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    33. Re:Naughty cannabis by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Quick Bing search: http://www.druglibrary.org/sch...

      That article asserts that the first recorded use of cannabis is in ancient China 10,000 years ago.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    34. Re:Naughty cannabis by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up please.

      Also don't forget about the HU series as well. HU-210 and JWH-018 were the primary chemicals in the "old" Spice before the DEA cracked down on HU-210. Spice was reformulated.

      Several JWH chemicals were still available then for a while longer, then the DEA cracked down. Spice was reformulated again.

      The Spice you, dear reader, probably read about in the news contained the chemicals from the AM series, and it sent people to the hospital. That time laws were made.

      Horray big government! Sending people to the hospital and killing them and enriching drug lords (both the kinds with guns and the kinds with MDs) instead of just letting us have the perfectly safe plant for our own quiet enjoyment! The cannabis must flow!

      Many of the chemicals in the designer drugs, spice are landing people in the hospital as well. The latest one, dubbed fruity pebbles is very dangerous. So there's definitely a precedent to prohibit the uncontrolled creation of cannabis like drugs.

    35. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PS. I wrote ball, not bowl.

    36. Re:Naughty cannabis by orledrat · · Score: 2

      True, but you are talking politics now.

      I have had a cannabis prescription for over 3 years now (in the Netherlands) and it's far from optimal as analgesic medicine, especially in crude form when vaporizing or even smoking the flower or concentrated "oil". Distilling the good bits and selectively hitting the relevant receptors sounds promising to me, and I appreciate that the development of such a distillate takes time because there is a lot of unknown terrain involved.

    37. Re:Naughty cannabis by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or Slashdot could step into the 21st century and provide an edit mechanism.

      Even if is timed to a few minutes, it would be very helpful.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    38. Re:Naughty cannabis by Megol · · Score: 1

      The post you replied to claim that it is the later versions of "spice" that lands people in hospital (if they make it there - some die quickly).

    39. Re:Naughty cannabis by Megol · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. Cannabis is (like any kind of drug) not completely safe. Drugs manipulate how the body works with effects that differ between different people. People have died from cannabis but less than those died from alcohol consumption.

    40. Re:Naughty cannabis by DroolTwist · · Score: 2

      Even if is timed to a few minutes, it would be very helpful.

      Actually, timed edits never help. The amount of time needed to proofread your post is invariably "time of the edit function + 1 second". All timed editing does is frustrate you.

    41. Re: Naughty cannabis by Ahnahmoley · · Score: 1

      Except it is habit forming, labeled addictive, by Harvard research. Look it up yourself. Around 10% of daily users studied became dependant. It does have side effects on the mind. It may not be as bad as opiates, but to say it's safe is a huge leap.

    42. Re:Naughty cannabis by h4ck7h3p14n37 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Lighten up Francis. It may be psychotomimetic for some, but those sensations go away when the user comes down. If you experience this, then the simple solution is to not consume cannabis again.

      As for psychological dependency, many things can lead to that. Typically people that become burnouts already had the type of personality to begin with. There are many brilliant people that use cannabis without issue.

      Oh, some people are allergic to marijuana to the degree that smelling second hand smoke can kill them.

      You need to provide a citation for this. You are not going to be able to find a report of someone dying from inhaling second-hand weed smoke because it doesn't happen.

    43. Re:Naughty cannabis by h4ck7h3p14n37 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's not a good source. No one has ever died from consuming cannabis, yet you claim multiple people have. I'm curious, what were there names, where were these deaths reported?

    44. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, just like tobacco was proven safe for hundreds of years. Great for pregnant women and those with lung problems.

      Until it wasn't.

    45. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I can't think of how anyone could possibly abuse the ability to edit posts.

    46. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Forgive me for thinking that site doesn't look particularly trustworthy or that the content isn't backed by facts or science of any kind.

      Also 10,000 != 12,000.

    47. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also that 10,000 year old use is claimed to be for hemp fibres, not consumption. GGP claims that humans have been consuming marijuana for at least 12,000 years, which is undoubtedly a number he pulled from his ass.

    48. Re:Naughty cannabis by PRMan · · Score: 1

      Not true. The 10 minutes I am given on other sites works for me.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    49. Re:Naughty cannabis by nytes · · Score: 1

      One person is brain dead. Maybe one of the other patients actually ate it.

      --
      -- I have monkeys in my pants.
    50. Re:Naughty cannabis by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      that same crudeness provides a degree of safety, cannabis, whether burned flowers, vaporized oils, or edibles and tinctures, contain an large number of compounds which act in different directions and balance each other out a bit, you have agonists and antagonists, it seems these early synthetics hit one receptor one way really hard, and in this case someone is now dead.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    51. Re:Naughty cannabis by sjames · · Score: 1

      We now know that THC without sufficient CBD to balance it out can cause psychiatric symptoms is some people. Fortunately, the plant contains both in ratios differing based on the variety. The most dangerous form of all is the "marinol" that the feds wanted doctors to prescribe in favor of marijuana. That contains no CBD, just THC.

      No smoke is all that good for the lungs, but many users are switching to vaporizing and others just eat it to avoid the lungs entirely. I've never heard of anyone actually that allergic to the smoke (as opposed to the herbicides the DEA occasionally likes to sprey on crops). I'll be wanting a citation for that one.

      As for psychological addictions, other things that cause that include jogging, video games, lifting weights, etc.

      Perfectly safe may be a bit exaggerated, but as risks go, it's a small one.

    52. Re: Naughty cannabis by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      It may not be as bad as opiates, but to say it's safe is a huge leap.

      Okay maybe safe isn't the right word. I suspect it would be safer if measured out into known dosages of known strength and packaged, in a hygienic facility.

      In any case I think its been shown to fall below the threshold of danger society otherwise considers acceptable. Alcohol for example has problems vary similar to opiates. Its efficacy declines and users become tolerant. Its highly habit forming in a significant part of the population. Its easy fairly easy to drink enough to depress respiration or interfere with reflexes that would prevent choking etc, if you are careless. Yet we allow people to buy it over the counter, and people use it to self medicate for pain and other problems all the time. It works too for awhile.

      I have broken filling the dentist can't fix until Tuesday. On his recommendation I am holing a swallow of whiskey in my cheek right now, to numb it. Its way more effective than the Advil I used during the work day.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    53. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please provide the peer reviewed studies showing it triggers psychosis, when you can't find them remember the golden rule "correlation does NOT equal causation". Yes cannabis isn't 100% safe, but you have taken way too much propaganda and asked for more, do the research instead of being a mouth peice for bullshit.

    54. Re:Naughty cannabis by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      I think Scots sound like Scots because they're also kinda stoned.

    55. Re:Naughty cannabis by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's what preview is for. A timed edit doesn't help anything other than those who are in such a hurry to reply they don't actually read their post in the preview pane. And someone that careless should be allowed to demonstrate it.

    56. Re:Naughty cannabis by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      This mistake is likely to set the research back a decade or more and there is precedent to back that. A while ago at the forefront of using modified viruses to alter gene's in patients an early experiment was conducted on a live human and ended up killing them. The researchers were careless but the field was ripe for some major discoveries and held the promise of being able to rewrite people's existing genetics to fix problems and possibly even extend life, the trick is controlling the bodies own immune system while the virus is active. The possibilities with this research were nearly endless.

      This was easily one of the most promising fields in trans-genetics, if they can control the immune response. Almost overnight after the death the government regulators in most of the western countries shut down almost all the research in the field including even the animal models. It still hasn't recovered and may never recover.

      I would wager this death and sickening of multiple people will do significant damage to the CBD research.

    57. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      people dying from smelling second-hand weed smoke is a hilarious assertion.

      and of course nuance is important; "[weed] is perfectly safe" was probably not written to communicate an absolute statement on the matter, but rather one of practicality. in absolute terms, drinking water is not perfectly safe either.

    58. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's not a good source. No one has ever died from consuming cannabis, yet you claim multiple people have. I'm curious, what were there names, where were these deaths reported?

      Most of the deaths reported associated with edible cannabis are people that ingest so much that they hallucinate and then commit suicide. But I doubt anyone has actually had a medical event which caused their death due to the consumption of edible cannabis.

      Here are a couple names of suicides of people not known to suffer suicidal tendancy before consuming edilbles ...
          Levy Thamba Pongi
          Luke Goodman
          Daniel Juarez

      Admittedly a suicide isn't that much different than simply killing yourself accidentally because you are high like...
          Tron Dohse
          Phillip Pierce

    59. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm.... How many people do you know who cheerfully admit that they can't function without their morning caffeine fix? Sounds a lot like dependency to me, and I'll bet it's more than 10% of daily users. Caffeine has side effects too, and unlike cannabis, you can OD on it.

      To say it's safe as coffee isn't such a leap now, is it?

    60. Re:Naughty cannabis by codeButcher · · Score: 1

      ... and the post has an on-topic sig.

      --
      Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
    61. Re:Naughty cannabis by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Agree entirely. I've used timed editing systems elsewhere and any reasonable window makes a huge difference. 10 to 15 minutes is fine.

      The current system is stupid and irritating.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    62. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did anybody RTFA and see the accompanying photo?

      There's a big red sign with the word "REANIMATIONS" on there. Multiple reanimation events sounds like the beginning of the zombie apocalypse to me.

    63. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone posts something, you respond, they go back and change their post making you look like a troll.

      You really want that ability?

    64. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No way to patent that and charge $300 a pill.

    65. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are a libertarian than getting caught with or selling Weed ought to be the same as selling Rose hips or Dandelions.

    66. Re:Naughty cannabis by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Let's see. I've been irritated by the lack of editing (conservatively) fifty to eighty times. No.. really probably over 100 times over the last 6 years. And I can't even quickly post a correction note.

      The number of times someone has edited their post to make me look like a troll on ANY SITE that allows edit... is zero times.

      What is it with this concern? Did that used to happen somewhere a lot? I've seen that objection before but I've never seen the problem occur.

      Usually there is an "edited X times" inline text at sites that allow editing.

      If you are really concerned put the changes in colored text. Perhaps indicate how much the article was changed with a percentage.

      Include the original text at the bottom of the message in italics.

      I hate the current system.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    67. Re: Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OP obviously consumed 12k years worth of cannabis in the elaboration of this study.

    68. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The first recorded history of anything is 10,000 years ago in China when hemp paper was developed. The first books made were medical journals, the first information written down were the suggested medical uses of cannabis. Do you really believe someone figured out how to make paper and rope from hemp, and subsequently discovered its medical uses from smoking? More likely that a couple thousand years after burning the bush on a communal fire, other uses were discovered.
      http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/1.htm

    69. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, its not a site. Its a book published by McGraw-Hill in 1980 by Ernest I. Abel titled... wait for it...

      Marihuana, the First Twelve Thousand Years

    70. Re:Naughty cannabis by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Actually, timed edits never help.

      They help me a lot on other sites. I can't type, so bash away my thoughts on the keyboard, then go back and fix all my mistakes. There's usually heap of them so I invariably miss a couple, and it's not until I have submitted, go back and read my reply in the context of the parent post that I notice the mistakes I've missed.
      So yeah, timed edits help quite a bit.

    71. Re:Naughty cannabis by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      Oh, some people are allergic to marijuana to the degree that smelling second hand smoke can kill them.

      You could say something that's not an exaggeration

      You should take you're own advice.

    72. Re:Naughty cannabis by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      How many people have died from water? Your argument is just as stupid...

    73. Re:Naughty cannabis by wkwilley2 · · Score: 1

      Also known as "David Draiman Syndrome"

      --
      Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
    74. Re:Naughty cannabis by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      You have obviously never tried growing dope in Scotland.

      (I had a friend do that - about 20,000 plants in a commercial greenhouse across the river from Queen Brenda's house. Got caught, which was a bummer.)

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    75. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, people died from stupid shit they did, not from cannabis. The only thing an "overdose" of cannabis is going to do it make you feel a bit uncomfortable and put you to sleep. And guess what you you wake up, you're completely fine. No hangover at all.

      More people have died from water overdose than cannabis.

    76. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do not think so!! There IS a variety of THC providing plants and each strand must provide its own combination of stimulation. At the Dawn of the Age of Fire... some other plants mixed in in the primordial camp fire and Man came out and claim Earth... Now I know there ARE other smokable plants beyond tobacco, THC and opium and probably there have been many more in the past before Islam and Neoislam the American Way, uh, managed to extinguish them? I am surprised we had so much knowledge about it because it seems to be missing from nearly Every Body, I could only **forecast** it was an imbalance what caused and produced the effects of THC under its meaning of signaling *just-have-fished-and-eaten* to the brain. - djb

    77. Re:Naughty cannabis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OH, radio says this research was stopped because a mentally retarded Excrement Colored Anthropoid female (a psychic ...) fell in trance while hearing of this, THEREFORE they have to stop the research or there is some threat ALL ... would fall into trance. See the logic? I do, and like THIS many other American decisions on many themes...

  2. System working as planned. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> 1 dead 5 wounded in a drug trial

    That's why they call it a trial and limit who can be in it (so it's not 1,000 dead and 5,000 wounded).

    1. Re:System working as planned. by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      I will be curious to hear some real facts come out about this ... brain death isn't a small mishap, it's a pretty serious reaction.

      One wonders what they were really given.

      If you have 90 random people smoke or ingest cannabis, I bet none of them would end up brain dead.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:System working as planned. by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly right. And its also exactly right that the prosecutors office investigate to make sure that all protocols were followed.

      This sort of thing is rare because the protocols to get a drug approved for human testing generally work. We know occasionally there will be events like this and its a risk we take. But in an event like this we need to establish that nobody was playing fast and loose with the protocols. Make sure data wasn't faked, make sure anything that might have predicted this wasn't suppressed or concealed, make sure the test subjects were being properly monitored, etc.

    3. Re:System working as planned. by I4ko · · Score: 1

      None will be left brain dead, but most will be left Walking dead.

    4. Re:System working as planned. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      One could argue humanity should be even riskier. Though no one wants to be the one who dies in testing, bringing effective drugs to mass market years, or even months faster could save many more lives than they cost in riskier testing.

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    5. Re:System working as planned. by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Though no one wants to be the one who dies in testing, bringing effective drugs to mass market years, or even months faster could save many more lives than they cost in riskier testing.

      That's a utilitarian argument. Morally, justifying something by putting the good of mankind over an individual leads to all kinds of truly ugly nastiness.

      There are situations, of course, where people need to be sacrificed for the good of others, or the good of all, but in my opinion they are the exception.

      And medical testing in particular preys on those who are desperate, or financially in need already. They may not have a gun to your head, but in most cases its not like they'd be taking the drugs if they had better choices.

    6. Re: System working as planned. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your implicit assertion is that it's fine to sacrifice the few for the many, anyway. The sick people can just die so that healthy people have a lower risk of volunteering for a dangerous study that might kill them. What is actually fair, just, free, and utilitarian is giving individuals the right over their own body to volunteer for drug trials for the compensation they demand. Worried that poor people will disproportionately sign up for drug trials because it pays well? Poor people are already at higher risk for injury and death and so for them it makes financial sense to better their lives at a small risk compared to their overall risk due to poverty. Unless you just want to solve poverty in the first place, which is fine too.

    7. Re:System working as planned. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      At least not from a single dose.

      I do know a few potheads, though, and "brain dead" is a pretty good description....

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    8. Re:System working as planned. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Duuuuude, if you can still walk after smokin the blunt... go out in the kitchen, there's gotta be some cheetos left, can ya fetch some?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    9. Re:System working as planned. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahaha, it's funny because that is the name of a SHOW!

    10. Re:System working as planned. by lgw · · Score: 1

      This sort of thing is rare because the protocols to get a drug approved for human testing generally work.

      They work well enough that I'd be surprised if this was the result of corner-cutting on the research. I think it's more likely that something went wrong in the preparation.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    11. Re:System working as planned. by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Morally, justifying something by putting the good of mankind over an individual leads to all kinds of truly ugly nastiness.

      Bullshit. As a society, we routinely engage in self-sacrificing activities for "the good of mankind". We donate our time to charities. We donate money. We even donate our very blood, which can have some serious (though rare) consequences.

      It's a matter of risk perception. Donating time or money are perceived as being no risk, even though charities are very often the target of homocides and other violent attacks, and monetary donations have an obvious economic detriment for the donor. Blood drives make a big show of their safety procedures, and continuously promote the benefits that are enabled by such donations. There are no advertising campaigns for clinical trials, though.

      Stories like this play on fear, promoting the idea that pharmaceutical companies are careless and cavalier about running harmful clinical trials, when the reality is that of the tens of thousands of drug trials run every year, this one is notable specifically because it had a bad outcome.

      And medical testing in particular preys on those who are desperate, or financially in need already. They may not have a gun to your head, but in most cases its not like they'd be taking the drugs if they had better choices.

      Also bullshit. Medical testing "preys" on mostly-healthy individuals who meet a particular set of criteria and, most importantly, can be found. That last part is often the most difficult. VERY few people go to their doctors and ask what they can do to help others, except for folks who are looking for unconventional ways to make money. Pharmaceutical researchers usually go to hospital networks and run queries against the hospital databases. Those databases are huge, and not tuned for such queries, so the queries take several months. Ultimately, there are very few qualified candidates returned, and they can be approached and asked to participate.

      Unfortunately, most patients, unless they actually need a treatment, will not join a trial. They're under the impression that trials are unnecessarily risky, and usually won't try to understand the risk analysis before rejecting it. Out of a few hundred candidate subjects in the US, only a few dozen will actually participate. Those who are "desperate, or financially in need" are the ones who have enough incentive to overcome the prejudice and consider the actual risks.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    12. Re: System working as planned. by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your implicit assertion is that it's fine to sacrifice the few for the many, anyway.

      No. It wasn't. The opposite generally.

      What is actually fair, just, free, and utilitarian is giving individuals the right over their own body to volunteer for drug trials for the compensation they demand.

      Sure. But that's not reality. Negotiation is never on equal footing. The poor and sick don't have the freedom to just walk away from the table if their compensation demands aren't met... they don't have a gun to their head, but they do not have good options. They cannot negotiate good deals for themselves.

      And worse, if negotiation itself isn't one of their skills, they lack the resources to hire one to represent their interests better than they could.

      Meanwhile, the person on the other side of the table, still eats and lives if they don't close the deal; and in many cases recruitment is their actual job -- this act of negotiation is the specific thing they are trained to do, and they are successul at their job because they are good at it.

      To call it a 'free, just, and fair' when one side is severely handicapped is ridiculous bullshit.

      Might as well put a guy who only plays poker once a year and barely knows the rules against a guy who plays poker professionally. On top of that the casual player will lose his apartment or be forced to drop school if he doesn't take home some winnings so he's under a lot of pressure to win, to take unnecessary risks, while the pro is financially secure, doesn't need to win, and can easily afford to lose and can make the best decision based purely on the odds (which he actually knows, while the other party is just roughly guessing at them). That's a fair match right? I mean... the deck itself is only metaphorically stacked against the poor guy, its not literally stacked against him. So ... fair?

      Bullshit.

      And THAT is how fair the average negotiation between a poor person and a corporation is, for anything.. .a job, a dispute, a settlement, anything.

      I'll give you a no strings attached voluntary negotiation between parties for compensation for medical testing or anything else, when it's actually a level field.

      Worried that poor people will disproportionately sign up for
      drug trials because it pays well? Poor people are already at higher risk for injury and death and so for them it makes financial sense to better their lives at a small risk compared to their overall risk due to poverty.

      The point being that the risk small to sign up precisely because of the controls in place. If we removed those controls, the risk goes up. Given that the poor do not have good options in the first place, upping the risk just forces them to assume more risk. They don't have the bargaining power to negotiate for more compensation to offset that risk. That becomes exploitation.

    13. Re:System working as planned. by vux984 · · Score: 1

      As a society, we routinely engage in self-sacrificing activities for "the good of mankind".

      There's big difference between voluntary and involuntary. And exploiting the desperate and sick while still calling it "voluntary" on their part is dishonest about the situation. At best its 'semi-voluntary'. If they wouldn't do it if they weren't sick or desperate than its not really completely voluntary. When I give blood, that's completely voluntary.

      Stories like this play on fear, promoting the idea that pharmaceutical companies are careless and cavalier about running harmful clinical trials, when the reality is that of the tens of thousands of drug trials run every year, this one is notable specifically because it had a bad outcome.

      I was specifically responding to a post wherein it was proposed that we take MORE risks with medical trials. The reason the incidence of these outcomes is so low, is precisely because the protocols in place work. Relaxing them WOULD result in more of these incidents.

      There are no advertising campaigns for clinical trials, though.

      Seems like this might be something worthwhile.

    14. Re:System working as planned. by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      And medical testing in particular preys on those who are desperate, or financially in need already.

      I was recently part of a clinical trial for a new type of mealtime insulin. This included, among other things, checking my blood sugar four times a day instead of the twice that my regular doctor needed, taking both the mealtime insulin and my regular daily Lantus, and regular visits to the study's doctor for blood tests. And, because of the way the new insulin acts, I had a large number of hypoglycemic episodes, although none bad enough to require medical intervention. For this, I got roughly $1000 in total. Yes, the extra money was nice, but nowhere near enough to compensate for the extra hassle and it certainly wouldn't have paid the bills if I'd ended up in the ER because of their meds. You'd really have to be very, very desperate to do it just for the money; most of us who spend time as human lab rats do it because it's the right thing to do and we're willing to accept the risks. Most of the time, all goes well. Alas, this was one of the rare times it didn't.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    15. Re: System working as planned. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No Cheetos in kitchen, perhaps I can drive to the store without getting a DUI. Legalization is so messed up. Somehow I can get a DUI with 0.0000000000 bac but won't get if I crash after smoking... What's wrong in this country. Seems like old times when France and England imported copious amounts of opium to keep the masses content and inert by making their brains slushy

    16. Re:System working as planned. by Megol · · Score: 1

      If one of them is allergic it could happen. It may be what killed this brave* test pilot.

      (* I really think he/she was, taking a risk for potentially improving the world)

    17. Re:System working as planned. by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      You don't get some sort of medical insurance with the trials paid for by the trial?

      Or life insurance for that matter?

    18. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Test with a small group first. Nothing in a safety-focused trial can be perfectly safe, of course, but then life itself is far from perfectly safe, so the trade-off is worthwhile.

      And cases like this are rare, while trials like this are not. The whole thing is only newsworthy because this kind of outcome is so exceptionally rare. I expect that more people get maimed or killed on the way to this type of trial than by participating in it. But that would not be newsworthy at all, as society has accepted a lot of tragedy from traffic accidents, despite them not being any less horrible.

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    19. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. These trials can, by their very nature, never be completely safe. They are still worthwhile because what comes out of them can eventually safe a lot of lives. Cutting corners, etc. is however not acceptable at all, as that will deceive participants about the actual risks and hence remove their informed consent.

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    20. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      As long as participants are informed accurately about the risks and are compensated and insured well, I have no problem with that. Many jobs come with health risks up to and including death. This one is not really that special.

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    21. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I do not agree. Many jobs are risky. For example, many roofers get seriously injured or killed before they reach retirement. Same for scaffolders. Getting crippled by RSI is a real risk for IT people. And so on.

      A sane discussion is not about whether to do it or not, but about what level of risk is acceptable in relation to what good the work does overall. Of course, the individuals that take the risk should be well informed, compensated and insured. In some cases it may be a good idea to exclude people that support children or a spouse. But those are trade-offs, not fundamental questions.

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    22. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Most likely explanation is simply a black swan, i.e. bad luck with the regular effects of the medication itself, no errors made anywhere. This is newsworthy only because it is so rare. And in the best case, it will serve to highlight some particular problem with a specific substance that was not known before.

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    23. Re:System working as planned. by vux984 · · Score: 1

      I do not agree. Many jobs are risky.

      Yes, but we make them as safe as possible.

      Remember the context here is that the poster i was replying to was arguing that we relax the safety protocols to make medical trials riskier. Because getting drugs etc to market faster would be a net good.

      You'd never argue that roofers shouldn't have to wear hard hats because it creates an expense that on a big project could instead be used to hire an additional roofer so the roof gets done faster. :)

    24. Re:System working as planned. by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Actually, we do not. Many/most roofers forgo safety measures because they cost time. The usual severe injury for them is falling off the roof. It just takes one second of bad luck to begin sliding.

      We do make things as safe as seems reasonable in comparison to the value of the work being done and the productivity reduction by the safety measures and what is "reasonable" is entirely up to debate.

      --
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    25. Re: System working as planned. by William+Baric · · Score: 1

      The idea of being "fair" or not is highly subjective.

      Suppose two people are competing in a race with a $100,000 prize. The first one didn't train at all, while the second one trained really hard for six months. That second one even invested money to hire a personal trainer. But despite all the efforts of the second runner, it's still the first one won the race.

      Now the question is: is if fair to give the $100,000 prize to the guy who didn't make any effort and won only because of his natural abilities? Or would it be fairer to give the prize to the second runner because of all the efforts he made?

      -

      In order to live, we do sacrifice animals. From simple food to medical testing, we don't hesitate to sacrifice an awful lot of living beings. We feel it's "fair" because we consider those animals have less value than a human being. We inherently believe it's OK to sacrifice the living being with the lesser value in order to let the living being with the greater value survive.

      So now the question is: do all human being have the same value or do they all have different values? Do some people have more value than others? And if one person has less value than another one, is it "fair" to sacrifice that person with the lesser value in order to let the one with the greater value live?

      Morality is subjective. So arguing if something is "fair" or not is just talking about your personal feelings.

    26. Re:System working as planned. by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      No insurance. We got all of the needed medicines and test equipment and were paid for our time, but that's it. Of course, this wasn't a preliminary trial like the one in the article and that may well make a difference.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    27. Re:System working as planned. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Make sure it didn't have ill-effects upon tested animals?

  3. No cannabinoids by guerby · · Score: 1

    "the drug was a painkiller containing cannabinoids" the french ministry of health says no cannabinoids was involved:

    http://www.liberation.fr/franc...

    The drug is about treating anxiety.

    1. Re:No cannabinoids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The drug is about treating anxiety.

      Well, I guess they can safely advertise it in the US by saying that it cures anxiety in at least 1 out of 6 people who take the drug.

  4. One thing's for sure by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You know the other 2 are suddenly REALLY happy they got the placebo

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    1. Re:One thing's for sure by plcurechax · · Score: 2

      You know the other 2 are suddenly REALLY happy they got the placebo

      Expect that in Phase 1 trials, no one is given a placebo. The purpose of Phase 1 trial is testing for safety, not efficacy, and is given to a very small number of healthy test subjects.

    2. Re:One thing's for sure by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know the other 2 are suddenly REALLY happy they got the placebo

      Expect that in Phase 1 trials, no one is given a placebo. The purpose of Phase 1 trial is testing for safety, not efficacy, and is given to a very small number of healthy test subjects.

      It has been reported in several media outlets that 6 were given the trial medication and 2 were given placebos in this particular round. In all around 90 people have participated in the Phase 1 trial so far, The article in the summary specifically states that some of the 90 were given placebos while the rest were given differing strengths of the drug. Everything I've read states that this particular round used the highest concentration of the drug and implies that with the other rounds the dosage increased with each round. So sounds like they were trying to find a maximum safe dosage. Basically they were looking for side effect or potential harm, in which case you certainly need a placebo group in each round to determine a baseline. And I would say they were wildly successful at determining the dosage at which the drug is unsafe.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    3. Re:One thing's for sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Expect that in Phase 1 trials, no one is given a placebo.

      This is entirely incorrect.

      Dose-ranging is usually a phase I or early phase II clinical trial. Typically a dose ranging study will include a placebo group of subjects, and a few groups that receive different doses of the test drug. For instance, a typical dose-ranging study may include four groups: a placebo group, low-dose group, medium-dose group and a high-dose group.

    4. Re:One thing's for sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to French website Figaro,

      [C]es essais de phase 1, après avoir été menés sur des chimpanzés, ont débuté le 9 juillet 2015 dans les locaux de Biotrial. 128 hommes et femmes participent aux essais. 90 personnes se sont vu administrer cette molécule à des doses variables, les autres ont pris une dose placebo , a indiqué la ministre.

      "The phase-1 tests, after having been done on chimpanzees, started on July 9 2015 at Biotrial. '128 men and women participated in the tests. 90 were administered the drug at different doses, while the others took placebo', said the minister (of Health, Marisol Touraine)"

    5. Re:One thing's for sure by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Very good translation. Not automated, I presume.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:One thing's for sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      they were wildly successful at determining the dosage at which the drug is unsafe.

      This! It is a terrible and unfortunate outcome for those trial participants affected, but isn't that why we *have* these safety trials on small populations? Unless they had severe professional negligence, there's no reason to criticize the drug company in this instance. They can't do safety trials of the safety trials, they can only speculate based on animal research, modeling and pharmacological understanding. So this was it - safety was tested, it was unsafe, end of that particular drug pathway, on to the next experiment.

    7. Re:One thing's for sure by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      You know the other 2 are suddenly REALLY happy they got the placebo

      actually, they were all taking the placebo. the first person fell down a flight of stairs after "feeling dizzy" and four behind him suddenly felt dizzy too falling down atop the first. it seems odd and unbelievable until you find out they were all soccer players.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    8. Re:One thing's for sure by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      there's no reason to criticize the drug company in this instance.

      There's no reason to criticize yet. That's what an inquiry is for. Many drugs go through trials. How many drugs suddenly die during those trials? Not get sick. Not have a condition worsen. But DIE.

    9. Re:One thing's for sure by PRMan · · Score: 2

      Leading to 38 VERY happy people, who now feel so lucky that they are going to celebrate at Chipotle.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    10. Re:One thing's for sure by gweihir · · Score: 1

      So what they found is a sharp step-response. Unusual, in particular with this severity, but not unheard of. Still, finding these things before doing large trials is what the safety-trials are for. And such outcomes must be very rare indeed, or this would not be news-worthy at all.

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  5. Shouldnt mix Cannabis ... by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1

    with Arsenic.

    1. Re:Shouldnt mix Cannabis ... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      But mixing it with Old Lace is fine.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  6. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm guessing this one isn't going to make it to market?

    1. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, they just have to figure out why it killed the humans but not the rats, find a way to reverse that, and they've found themselves a market.

    2. Re:So... by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. The cause could be due to issues not completely related to the drug itself. Perhaps a bad batch was manufactured and participants were given something outright poisonous, or it was combined with something else that produced this outcome. Maybe the people running the study screwed up and dosed people at one hundred times the recommended amount.

      Also, any drug already on the market is unsafe if you take enough of it. Take a sufficient number of aspirin and it will result in illness or outright kill you.

      What's important is figuring out why this happened so it can be prevented from occurring again.

    3. Re:So... by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe the people running the study screwed up and dosed people at one hundred times the recommended amount.

      That happened at a homoeopathic clinic once. Instead of getting 0.0 of the active ingredient they got 000.0.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re:So... by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

      Maybe. Usually, they just added this in their "side effect" clause in their advertisement. Have you ever listened to any drug advertising on TV in the US? Most of them would try to go through their side effect by talking real quick when the advertising is ending (e.g. the side effect may cause brain dead, suicidal, etc...).

    5. Re:So... by hublan · · Score: 2

      That happened at a homoeopathic clinic once. Instead of getting 0.0 of the active ingredient they got 000.0.

      And they drowned?

      --
      My spoon is too big.
    6. Re:So... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Aspirin can actually kill at almost any dosage. It is just exceptionally rare to happen.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I gave maths tutoring to a nurse once. It was incredibly hard to make her understand the differences between milligrams and micrograms ...

  7. Blame... cannabis? by Ecuador · · Score: 2

    I thought it went "Blame Canada".

    But if it was natural cannabinoids we have to "congratulate" the lab for producing something deadly from a relatively benign plant...
    Also, I am curious how this can happen. Before starting such trials they are supposed to give huge doses of the "new" stuff to some unfortunate non-human mammals. I didn't know there could be a fatal compound that is non-fatal for e.g. rats in larger doses (if it was, it would have raised many flags I assume).

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:Blame... cannabis? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 1

      While we're not likely to know the details for a while yet, I wonder if it might not have had something to do with trying to create a synthetic or artificial version that does the same thing, in order to get around drug war paranoid reactions to the "natural" version. It's always struck me as ridiculous that society tends to be so averse to the idea that something beneficial could also be pleasant, so we have to strip one from the other. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if doing that sort of thing led them to instead accidentally create something that was poisonous instead of helpful.

    2. Re:Blame... cannabis? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      And, really, if you're trying to test this ... do a bloody honest test.

      You do an study in which one group is (placebo|synthetic) and another group which is (placebo|pot).

      If you're trying to test a lab-made version of it, you should also be testing the real thing to prove you're doing better.

      Nobody will let you run that test, but I'm betting anxiety among your group with the pot goes down, unless someone has too much and has an unpleasant ride. I'm also betting absolutely ZERO of your pot users end up brain dead or otherwise in critical care.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Blame... cannabis? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wtf are you talking about? This is a drug that specifically targets receptors in order to: enhance the analgesia and reduce side effects (because,you know, some people cannot be high while taking pain medications...).

      You seem to be on of those "all natural" freaks that think plants based chemicals are safer or more effective than well synthesized chemicals that only produce effect where they're supposed to. You should really start drinking strong willow bark tea (salicylic acid) instead of aspirine (acetyl-salicylic acid).

  8. Where's PETA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They should be all over this. Testing drugs on humans must be stopped!

    1. Re:Where's PETA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Humans can give informed consent.

    2. Re:Where's PETA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you really think people wo take part in such trials can be said to be smart enough to be able to give informed consent?

    3. Re:Where's PETA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After all, humans are animals too.

    4. Re:Where's PETA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PETA does.

  9. Drug trials by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    I am always surprised they find people who willingly participate in drug trials, especially for something like a painkiller. Do we really need ANOTHER painkiller on the market?

    1. Re:Drug trials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Out of all the drugs out there I think a cannabis based pain killer probably is needed. I mean one that doesn't leave you brain dead.

      But if they had one that works great, is safe, and doesn't get you high I'd like that since I don't like taking even OTC pain killers.

    2. Re:Drug trials by swb · · Score: 2

      Of course we do, all the truly effective ones now are opioids and they get you high, too, and our Calvinist morality and repressive drug control regime hates this, so we are desperately trying to find something, anything, that actually works as a painkiller without any euphoric side effects.

      True, there are some alternatives, but all the really heavy anti-inflammatories have nasty cardiovascular risks and the others, like gabapentin do some nasty things to neurotransmitters and really only have marginal effectiveness (in addition to getting you weirdly high the first few days you take them, I know first hand).

      We *could* just try to figure out tests that help sort out why some people are prone to addiction from opioids and make sure to monitor their therapies more closely (or come up with ways to augment them to reduce addiction risk), but that would mean allowing the rest of the population pain relief and euphoria, and that's just not right with God's Plan.

    3. Re: Drug trials by ZeroWaiteState · · Score: 1

      If it's one that has less addictive properties than opiates but similar efficacy then yes.

    4. Re:Drug trials by Tranzistors · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > and our Calvinist morality and repressive drug control regime hates this

      Oh please! Problem with all current pain killers is that they are NOT EFFECTIVE for chronic pain. Opioids require ever bigger dosage to get the same effect, and your plan to "monitor their therapies" just mean that if the source of the pain is not dealt with, treatment will not be effective. But sure, blame Calvinists.

    5. Re:Drug trials by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      It's easy money. I know poor people who do this. It's kind of fucked up, but that's how it is.

    6. Re: Drug trials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are other kinds of pain besides chronic pain, and it can still be a huge hassle getting access to opioids for them even though the tolerance is much less of an issue in those cases.

    7. Re:Drug trials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, Jackass. I'm in chronic pain. Narcotics help me not give a shit about the pain, but it's still there, and the whole "addictive" part is rather bad. Less bad painkillers will do a hell of a lot more for quality of life on the planet then would curing cancer, as there are a lot more people suffering a lot longer from chronic pain and addiction.

    8. Re:Drug trials by hankwang · · Score: 1

      I volunteered in a drug trial around 1995 or so. Back then, it paid NLG 100 per day, or EUR 70 corrected for inflation. When you're in college, that's a lot of money, especially since you can study your quantum mechanics at the same time. There was a guy who was participating in studies all the time.

      It was a phase-2 trial though; the (benign) side effects were already known. Phase 1 and drugs with severe side effects paid better. And we were told what kind of medicine it was and what side effects to expect before signing.

    9. Re:Drug trials by swb · · Score: 1

      My understanding (and experience) with opioids is that the tolerance is mostly to the psychological effects, not the actual pain reduction.

      This was also my personal experience after an accident ripped my hand up, requiring half of a finger to be amputated and a bone fusion in the other finger.

      I got decent pain relief on a fixed quantity of oxycodone for about 4-5 months.

      Not sure if that counts as "chronic pain" but without oxycodone, my hand hurt like crazy until it had sufficiently healed. Maybe it's different for people with irreparable back problems or something where there's a greater level of pain.

    10. Re:Drug trials by Tranzistors · · Score: 1

      I too am no doctor, but I have spent time under pain killers after surgery and if your case was anything like mine, the original source of pain became less and less intense. Like, if in the first week you would be on pain level 9 without medication, but after 10 weeks pain level would have dropped to level 5, and the required amount of morphine is the same, then you have developed some tolerance.

      I had to use morphine for couple of weeks and didn't even notice any withdrawal, but what I have gathered (anecdotally) from other people who were on pain killers, when you are taken off pain medication, you do feel actual pain, but it is usually written off as a /just another pain episode/, after a while it gets better so who cares.

    11. Re:Drug trials by PRMan · · Score: 1

      Nobody cares that you feel good when taking a drug. It's the addiction leading to all kinds of destructive behaviors that causes action.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    12. Re:Drug trials by muridae · · Score: 1

      I've been on Fentanyl for over 2 years for chronic pain that can not be surgically corrected. The first year, I didn't need any sort of extra for break-through pain; even the lowest dose was strong enough to keep me both pain free and mobile (if a little sleepy now and then). More recently, I've gotten morphine instant release added to the regimen, even after increasing the dose of the fentanyl a little (by accounting for metabolism and skin in how/where/when I wear a patch) it still doesn't provide the same amount of relief. Rather than double the dose of the main medication, which is unfortunately the next available step, I get an adjunct.

      Not to disparage, but 4 or 5 months around a known accident is not chronic pain. Chronic pain would be if your hand continued to hurt (even a 5 out of 10 is considered "treat this") years later. Level of pain is only an issue in how much treatment a person needs, not the kind of treatment that's used. What sucks is that our options for treating low level chronic pain are tylenol (which causes liver failure in large doses), aspirin (causes gastric bleeds in some), and . . . that's about it. A step up you have tramadol and tordol, the first a synth-opioid that can't make you high but can raise serotonin levels so much that it can't be prescribed with most psychiatric medications (and if you have chronic pain and aren't depressed about it, you are rare) while the second is a very strong version of aspirin that causes even worse gastric bleeds if you are prone to them. Above that, opioids, just opioids. Well, there is burenorphine, a synth-not-quite-opioid that can be used for pain if you aren't too tolerant of the other drugs, but it's only got a small therapeutic index for pain (starting dose is 1/4th the max dose) and switching from the lowest fentanyl patch to butrans patches required the second strength level, so not a lot of room to go up.

  10. Facts would be welcome by orledrat · · Score: 2

    I am keeping an eye on these things as a chronic pain patient who is prescribed cannabis, but I am not 100% sure exactly WHICH drug this is about... It might have been BIA 02-093, aka Eslicarbazepine, from looking at earlier trials for painkillers by this company. Anyone know for sure?

    1. Re:Facts would be welcome by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      TFA is short on facts, the claim it was cannabis derived is being rejected.

      Short answer, it doesn't look like anybody has said anything meaningful yet about the actual drug in question.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Facts would be welcome by I4ko · · Score: 1

      Which is the company?

    3. Re:Facts would be welcome by Chelloveck · · Score: 1

      It probably hasn't been determined yet, but I'd like to know where the problem ultimately lies: Is it actually in the formulation of the drug, or was it mis-manufactured, mis-administered, or simply contaminated at some point?

      --
      Chelloveck
      I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    4. Re:Facts would be welcome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unlikely. Eslicarbazepine has been on the market since 2013 so there would be no need to do a Phase I trial on healthy volunteers.

    5. Re:Facts would be welcome by Dogers · · Score: 1

      And they probably won't either, in order to protect the investment they've put in it so far..

      --
      I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
    6. Re:Facts would be welcome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quoting http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35320895
      Reports that the drug is a cannabis-based painkiller have been denied by the [French] health ministry.

  11. Fuck spice and all that jazz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Those who do not understand Cannabis are doomed to reinvent it, poorly." - Heavy Vaper, 2016

    1. Re:Fuck spice and all that jazz by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 1

      Heavy Vaper only says that because they've never tried fuck spice. It'll blow your mind, and more.

  12. US death penalty new drug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Were they testing drugs to be used for the death sentence??

    1. Re:US death penalty new drug? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not very likely in France, where capital punishment was outlawed 35 years ago.

  13. Interesting reminder... by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

    This is a pretty interesting reminder that many drugs' mechanism of action aren't fully understood. Even those that are well known operate solely by suppressing or enhancing some specific chemical reaction chain, so in reality they're pretty blunt tools. It's really interesting to think about the drug discovery process; everyone assumes that they at least won't die if the drug has made it to human trials, but apparently that's not the case!

  14. Yes but how many were in the control group? by tylersoze · · Score: 1

    I know know, terrible insensitive joke.

  15. Re:They aren't volunteers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    basic english fail:

    volunteer means to freely offer, NOT necessarily to offer without compensation, hence a volunteer can be paid, and often is (volunteer firefighter, eg)!

  16. typical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Typical thing you expect from nanny-state socialists. No incentive to do things right.
    --
    roman_mir

  17. Re:They aren't volunteers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to French website Figaro,

    ces essais de phase 1, après avoir été menés sur des chimpanzés, ont débuté le 9 juillet 2015 dans les locaux de Biotrial. 128 hommes et femmes participent aux essais. 90 personnes se sont vu administrer cette molécule à des doses variables, les autres ont pris une dose placebo, a indiqué la ministre.

    "This phase-1 test, after having been done on chimpanzees, started on July 9 2015 at Biotrial. '128 men and women participated in the test. 90 of them were administered the molecule at different doses, while the others took placebo', said the minister (of Health, Marisol Touraine)"

  18. Phase 1...? by grumpyman · · Score: 1

    I thought phase 1 is always on animal.... no?

    1. Re:Phase 1...? by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      That was done in phase 0 testing.

    2. Re:Phase 1...? by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Perhaps it is just phase 1 human trials.

      They might have already gone through all the phases of animal trials.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  19. Re:They aren't volunteers by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    You can compensate a volunteer and still have them be considered a volunteer. What the hell are you talking about?

    The military in any country which doesn't have mandatory service is a "volunteer army". But they sure as hell get paid for it.

    You're making up a definition of volunteer which isn't real in this case.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  20. Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by swb · · Score: 1

    Do they do animal testing with drugs like this on chimps or monkeys to ascertain this kind of safety ahead of time before giving it to humans?

    I would imagine they might have given it to rats just to make sure they didn't fall over dead immediately, maybe dogs, too, but I would expect that chimps would have a brain structure more similar to humans and might have been more revealing in safety of a drug like this.

    I can appreciate where some chimp experiments might be a bit harsh, but a pain killer that you have good reason to think might work and might relieve pain would seem to be on the lighter side of animal testing and certainly better than dead humans.

    1. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Must drugs are processed in the liver. Different animals livers work differently. I know that when our dog had surgery the vet told us to use a certain type of pain med as others were harmful to dogs. So testing on dogs probably wouldn't work. Don't know about chimps though.

    2. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      You can't use chimps unless there's reason to believe nothing else would be close enough. Monkeys ought to be just fine though...

    3. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Then use lawyers and politicians.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Frederic54 · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's written in the article, but wait, it's /. so you didn't read TFA...

      --
      "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
    5. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      Do they do animal testing with drugs like this on chimps or monkeys to ascertain this kind of safety ahead of time before giving it to humans?

      RTFA

    6. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by umafuckit · · Score: 1

      There is a sequence of testing which is done on animals. I can't remember exactly how it goes, but I think it starts with mice and rats then moves up to rabbits and dogs (beagles, because the poor buggers are so docile). A whole host of tests are done and these are, unfortunately, necessary unless we want more things like this to happen. Tests can't catch everything, but they're better than nothing. It should be emphasized that these are safety tests, which are distinct from the research that needs to be done to find the drug in the first place.

    7. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then use lawyers and politicians.

      but phase 1 trials are for humans...

    8. Re:Would animal testing on chimps or monkeys help? by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

      They would have to find some that weren't brain-damaged going into the trial.

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  21. the same holds true for cleared pharmaceutical by nimbius · · Score: 1

    In the states, we have pharmaceutical ads on television that are usually suffixed with a chyron or various disclaimers and a string of long-winded and frankly quite mumbly side effects all played over the backdrop of a beautiful sunset or a babbling brook. As someone whos worked in pharmaceuticals in the past, the biggest favour you can do for yourself when watching one of these commercials is to suffix your own side effect onto the drug at the end, one they often refer to mention. "Or death."

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:the same holds true for cleared pharmaceutical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its even more fun if you add the phrase "some patients explode." Or the general warning "Do not take if you are nursing, pregnant, may become pregnant, or are the result of a pregnancy"

    2. Re:the same holds true for cleared pharmaceutical by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of what GLaDOS says before one of the trials in "Portal" ;-)

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  22. An acceptable price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All EU citizens are willing to give their lives for the greater glory of Europe!

    Fuer Europa! Heil Europa! Wir essen das Scheisse fuer dich!

  23. Story Is A Hoax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait a minute. I supposed to believe that something went wrong at a European health facility filled with European doctors educated in European medical colleges because of a European pharmaceutical company?

    News flash, people! France isn't in the United States!

  24. Six men by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop sexism in STEM! Why is there no gender parity in drug testing?

    1. Re:Six men by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      You joke but it's actually a serious problem in medicine that drugs aren't being sufficiently tested on female subjects.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:Six men by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about all the other 253 genders listed on FaceBook. Have they trialled them on those?

      Equality! Equality!

    3. Re:Six men by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only there. I figure that women with their smaller hands and slimmer, more agile fingers could be well put to use in bomb disposal units. But not more than 50% because equality!

    4. Re:Six men by plcurechax · · Score: 1

      You joke but it's actually a serious problem in medicine that drugs aren't being sufficiently tested on female subjects.

      I believe the problem is that because of various historic factors, but I suspect that there may still be normal to that specify healthy adult males as being the only suitable test candidates in phase 1 trails, partial because at that stage the researchers want to minimise possible complications including unknown / undisclosed pregnancies.

  25. mod parent up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    420

  26. Coming to a Headline Near You by FreeUser · · Score: 2

    Waiting for all the morons to blame cannabis.

    API: Dozens of school children were murdered by a deranged gunman in YourCity, USA earlier today. Governor Dumbshit (R|D) deplored the loss of life, but reminding voters that "at least we can rest easy in the knowledge that the gunman's second amendment right to bear arms was in no way abridged." Early reports that the bullets contained cannabis, and that medical marijuana lies at the heart of the tragedy, have been debunked, although Governor Dumbshit (D|R) has promised voters a thorough investigation "to get to the real facts." After wiping drool from his chin, the Governor went on to say, "If cannabis bullets weren't responsible for the loss of life, then why did investigators feel the need to deny cannabis was involved? Clearly, where there's smoke, there's cannabis."

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  27. Re:They aren't volunteers by hawguy · · Score: 1

    basic english fail:

    volunteer means to freely offer, NOT necessarily to offer without compensation, hence a volunteer can be paid, and often is (volunteer firefighter, eg)!

    Unless these people are independently wealthy and have no need for money, they are not "freely offering". If you entice someone to do something with cash that they need or want, they are not volunteering, it's an exchange of goods or services -- they are offering their body for money.

    If people aren't doing it for the money, then why do they get paid?

  28. Watched it today by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Just fix the fucking leak already, you blind bastard."

    D.Troi, ST:TNG Thine Own Self

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  29. For the politicians. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Somebody on the street suggested that these need to be provided to a majority of the politicians. I think that is an extreme, although it may solve a lot of problems.

    1. Re:For the politicians. by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Won't work. Politicians are already brain dead.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  30. Cannabis derivatives by gninnor · · Score: 0

    If you want to outlaw pot, fine. But stop calling it Cannabis derivatives, the biggest one is probably Dihydrogen Monoxide (yes H2 fucking 0*), which has health advantages taken internally.

    You want an easy high? Fine, Smoke some herb. You want medicine, go through birch, valerian root, Isolate it like a professional and call it what it is.

    *Yes I did that on purpose.

  31. Correlation... by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thus proving time and time again that mouse biochemistry != human biochemistry. "But it was working fine in the lab!"

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:Correlation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thus proving time and time again that mouse biochemistry != human biochemistry. "But it was working fine in the lab!"

      And no one ever said otherwise, heck getting it to work on mice is always the easy part, modifying the drug for use in humans is the hard part.

    2. Re:Correlation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And also that we really need to have non-human primate trials before going to humans. Monkey physiology != human physiology either, but it's a heck of a lot closer than mouse.

    3. Re:Correlation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they ought to try it on the US Congress... Only problem is that it would be difficult to
      discern the effects, judging by the current behavior of the potential participants...

      Then again, they could determine the correlation of the biochemistries between mice,
      normal humans, and Congress, which could lead to a further understanding of The Problem...

  32. The drug concerned by orledrat · · Score: 1

    You are right, it's not about eslicarbazepine (BIA 02-093).

    Instead, this appears to be a FAAH inhibitor named BIA 10-2474.

    1. Re:The drug concerned by h4ck7h3p14n37 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I also believe BIA 10-2474 is the compound based on what I've been able to piece together via web searches.

      Here are the sources I located:

      http://www.biocentury.com/prod... http://www.insurancejournal.co...

      This is truly tragic, God help the people affected.

  33. BIA 10-2474 by orledrat · · Score: 5, Informative

    The drug in question appears to be a FAAH inhibitor named BIA 10-2474.

    1. Re:BIA 10-2474 by pesho · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is still a speculation. The drug does seem to be called BIA 10-2474, according to recruitment materials from the drug testing company. There is only circumstantial evidence that this is a fatty acid amide hydroxylase (FAAH) inhibitor. The speculations are based on patent filings by the pharmaceutical company which ordered the trial (Bial) and the general description that the drugs was "meant to act on the body’s endocannabinoid system". FAAH is an enzyme that among other things degrades endocanabinoids. The rational is that if you slow the degradation of endocanabinoids you will experience less pain (works on mice). So far nobody who is in position to know it has made a statement as to the specific mode of action of the drug or its chemical structure.

      According to fairly vague statements it seems that they were doing a dose escalation study, where different groups of people are given increasing doses of the compound in order to determine the point where the side effects start to show up. The people who got injured were in the group that received the highest dose. Usually this is done very carefully so you can stop before the side effects become severe. However, the response to drugs is not always in linear relationship with the dose and a small increase over a certain threshold may produce very severe adverse effects. This is always worked out in advance on lab animals (mice, rats, rabbits, etc). In the patent application they only cite testing in mice. Subtle differences in the biology of lab animals and humans have caused at least one other clinical trial to turn into a disaster. Of course there is always the possibility that somebody screwed up the dosing and gave them more than they should have received.

  34. Any secondary indications after death? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any secondary indications after death?

    It may still work.. patience.. .patience..

  35. Probably a vaccine by trevc · · Score: 0

    This is why vaccines are bad.

  36. Re:They aren't volunteers by hawguy · · Score: 1

    You can compensate a volunteer and still have them be considered a volunteer. What the hell are you talking about?

    The military in any country which doesn't have mandatory service is a "volunteer army". But they sure as hell get paid for it.

    You're making up a definition of volunteer which isn't real in this case.

    In the general sense, volunteers are not compensated:

    Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity where an individual or group provides services for no financial gain. Volunteering is also renowned for skill development, and is often intended to promote goodness or to improve human quality of life. Volunteering may have positive benefits for the volunteer as well as for the person or community served.[1] It is also intended to make contacts for possible employment. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster.

    Military volunteers are a special case:

    A military volunteer is a person who enlists in military service by free will, and is not a mercenary or a foreign legionnaire. Volunteers often enlist to fight in the armed forces of a foreign country. Military volunteers are essential for the operation of volunteer militaries.

  37. ya y abring up the fact there is weed in it.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously,,
    this is so lame, but expected from the uninformed minds at DHI.
    by leaking some of the key ingredients, you now taint the story..
    I hope this does not turn into a pot hating exercise..

    Considering this has to be one of first chemicially induced death from a pot by product, I have to wonder..
    Was it prepaired correctly? What were the other ingredients?
    How was it administered?
    Were the drugs tested before dossages were given, to ensure they were kept right (right temp, away from light, etc..)

  38. Clearly by radarskiy · · Score: 1

    We can prevent this from happening again if we eliminate the onerous regulatory requirements to perform drug trials.

    (note: joke)

  39. Re:They aren't volunteers by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    If you entice someone to do something with cash that they need or want, they are not volunteering

    Wrong. In an army, volunteers generally means those who are not conscripts. But both get paid.

    If people aren't doing it for the money, then why do they get paid?

    You may want to google for terms like "false dichotomy".

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  40. Get your facts straight!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Earlier reports suggested that the drug contained cannabinoids, an active ingredient found in cannabis plants, but the minister said it did not contain the drug or any derivatives of it."

  41. Re:They aren't volunteers by hawguy · · Score: 1

    If you entice someone to do something with cash that they need or want, they are not volunteering

    Wrong. In an army, volunteers generally means those who are not conscripts. But both get paid.

    If people aren't doing it for the money, then why do they get paid?

    You may want to google for terms like "false dichotomy".

    I don't see the false dilemma - except for the few that are willing to sacrifice their health for the greater good without compensation, what do you think motivates "thousands of students looking to make money" to "volunteer" for medical experiments? Do you think those thousands of students would do it if not for the money?

    Why is it so bad to just say what it is -- people getting paid to take on health risks for the benefit of others? No need to whitewash it and say that they all "volunteered" when they are really just there for the money.

  42. Require a pre-mortem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's tough.

    I'm not often in favor of more legislation, but here's something that should be required for
    any type of drug trial on humans.

    A mandatory, independently facilitated pre-mortem where everyone from R&D and other involved teams gets their say on possible dangers. Anonymously.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-mortem

  43. Re:They aren't volunteers by gweihir · · Score: 1

    So you think people have no agency in deciding how they want to earn money? That is stupid.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  44. Better than POWERBALL by Provocateur · · Score: 1

    OK, here's an idea that's slashdot-worthy: Hire your Bill-Murray-in-Wild-Things-type shyster lawyer, sue the company on behalf of the braindead guy for millions (francs though, take it or leave it) and spend the rest of your life touring your bucket list (although your master lying down in the back of the stretch limo won't be the whiner/complaining type simply because he's dead. I hope I wasn't going too fast for you...

    Remember kids: There is no OFF position on the genius switch

    --
    WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
    1. Re:Better than POWERBALL by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      sue the company on behalf of the braindead guy for millions

      I'm no lawyer but I don't think you can just sue anyone of behalf of anyone else just because you feel like it...

    2. Re:Better than POWERBALL by Provocateur · · Score: 1

      Correct, Mr. Griffin, but I hastily typed out that comment but what I meant was, If you were related to him, say, as a brother and wanted to claim "wrongful death" or medical malpractice, and demanded compensation for either one. The fact that his last name was Hearst or Hughes or even Getty or Gates or Hilton is irrelevant.

      --
      WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
  45. Holy Crap! The French Courts must be hell on Jury by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 1

    I mean, come on. Here in the U.S. when we have drug trials, though the pharmaceutical companies do there best to dazzle the jury with their $1,000.00 per hour lawyers, we don't bore them to death. I mean seriously, a trial left jurors dead and in critical condition? That's some real jurisprudence if you ask me!

  46. Re:They aren't volunteers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Here we go again.You're trying to minimize peoples agency so you can justify some government intrusion that makes these decisions for them. Go away statist.

  47. Trial by Livius · · Score: 1

    I thought this was going to be about a pharmaceutical company getting sued.

  48. Re Drug Trials by unclefred · · Score: 1

    "Consistency is the Hobgoblin of small minds but Specialization is the ruination of all minds" Leonardo's Law

  49. Re:They aren't volunteers by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    And there's the root of your false dichotomy: "For no financial gain" != "Not compensated".

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  50. Re:They aren't volunteers by hawguy · · Score: 1

    And there's the root of your false dichotomy: "For no financial gain" != "Not compensated".

    Which is the root of my argument that the pharmaceutical "volunteers" are not really volunteers, since they receive financial compensation.