• Question: Do you consider that treatments for terminal diseases with early research backing should be offered to patients with no prior trials having been conducted on humans?

    Asked by r1ch to Chris, Kay, Kerstin, Lorna, Liv on 17 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Lorna Houlihan

      Lorna Houlihan answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      honestly no. Just because a treatment has a good response in animal models doesn’t mean that it will have the same effect in humans – there are massive differences between rodents and humans!

    • Photo: Olivia Hibbitt

      Olivia Hibbitt answered on 17 Mar 2010:

      Hi r1ch,
      very deep questions from you!!! It’s making my brain hurt this early in the morning!! Treating patients with terminal conditions always is a bit of a grey area. I work with a lot of scientists researching cancer gene therapy. This is using viruses to kill cells rather than deliver a working copy of genes. These treatments are very experimental but they often have permission to try it in patients well before other treatments that would be treating non-terminal disease would. If you talk to cancer patients they are pretty willing to give anything a go if there is a chance it might help them. Ask yourself this, if you found out tomorrow you had an agressive form of cancer that gave you months to live, but there was an experimental treatment that might cure you would you go for it? I would jump in head first!!

    • Photo: Kay Penicud

      Kay Penicud answered on 18 Mar 2010:

      Yes, if the research suggests the treatment has a strong chance of working. it would depend how far along a patient was in a terminal disease – i don’t think risky treatments is a good idea if you still have years to live, but are when the prognosis is only a few weeks or months. People should b e able to make their own decision about whether to take the treatment though

    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 18 Mar 2010:

      Yes, I think they should. To get a picture to see if the treatment really works, you probably would have to test it on someone who was genuinely ill. However, I think people have to be very careful with this, as people how are terminally ill will often be frustrated and desperate and might sign up quickly to just any treatment. For the treatment to have gotten that far though, extensive tests on animals will already have happened, but you never know 100% how the medication would work in humans.

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