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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (164698)	5/19/2020 2:45:08 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Recommended By CentralParkRanger Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361644

Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your concern: You are considering the possibility of an ethical issue if it turns out the group who receive the treatment progress better than the control group, or vice-versa... and as a result, it is necessary to stop the trial and offer the treatment to both groups (or to withhold treatment from both groups). Lord love a duck! No. The ethical issue is deliberately infecting the participants with covid for the purpose of determining if it inhibits the contraction of the disease. Further questionable, establishing a situation that requires cheering for the control group members to get very sick and even die because that's what would be needed to prove the hypothesis. Usually in RCTs we cheer the experimental group getting better. No one has to be harmed to make them better. ...and as a result, it is necessary to stop the trial and offer the treatment to both groups (or to withhold treatment from both groups) What treatment? The point is to determine if the drug (HCQ in this case) inhibits contracting covid. Within two weeks the answer would be known, contraction a known. You test and the subjects either have it or they don't. There would be no treatment to withhold. The HCQ would have been already given or not, that being the first step. Nor would there be anything with which to treat. The study was not designed to prove that the drug was an efficacious treatment. It was designed to prove that it stopped exposed people from becoming infected. You still would not know if HCQ was a viable treatment. Lack of a controlled study (which sometimes is not possible at all) cannot inhibit scientific progress. We have a long established practice of relying on RCT's for determining the safety and efficacy of drugs. If that has not happened, a drug remains unproven, in limbo, undetermined. To do what you suggest we would have to upend the paradigm where a drug has to prove itself to be considered proven. You seem ok with doing that cavalierly. Maybe you are not the right person with whom to usefully discuss an ethical question.