Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
My understanding is it would take at least 5 million dollars to fund a proper clinical trial. In my mind, if you weigh the risk / reward, this thing should thing should have been started yesterday.
However, we have the MS Society spending one million, and the Alberta Government spending one million, over an extended period of time...to find out what?...if they should go ahead and spend a few extra million.
My goodness, we pay Iginla more than it would cost to fund a trial. With so many sufferers, and more and more people spending large amounts of money going abroad to have the procedure, my question is why in heavens name is it taking so long for someone or some group, or the Government to come up with the money to do the trial?
|
It's probably a lot more than $5 million for a proper clinical trial. But regardless of cost, they need the observational data first to meet ethical requirements as well as to demonstrate that the clinical trial is worth conducting. If they put a bunch of people in a randomized clinical trial, and the ones that get the procedure all end up with terrible side effects a year or two down the road, whoever funded the study would end up facing lawsuits and major liabilities. A more likely outcome of the observational study could be that those getting the surgery regress within a couple of years, in which case health authorities would have to decide whether the temporary benefits outweighed the risks of the surgery before approving a clinical trial.
The process is frustrating for those suffering from a condition such as MS (or cancer, where again new treatments take many years to get approved), and there have been various debates over the years about how it could be improved, but the current system is in place for good reasons.
As to why Iginla is paid more than it costs to fund medical studies - I guess that's a symptom of our priorities as a society. Most people would rather spend money watching a hockey game than donate it to medical research.