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Comment by nonbel | Hacker News Reader

You do not really understand what "experimental treatment" means without doing medical research. In general, it means it is extremely more likely to acutely hurt more than it helps you. I mean like million to one odds.

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But for some reason doctors and researchers are viewed as understanding that better than the public. But they're still happy to tell a wife that they might want to call a priest for her husband in a comma...

"But for some reason doctors and researchers are viewed as understanding that better than the public."

Wait: you're arguing that doctors and researchers don't understand the risks of experimental treatments better than the general public?

Why would you think that?

Things might be considerably different if people weren't so litigious when these thing go the wrong way. I can understand doctors being extremely hesitant to suggest experimental therapy if it means they might be bankrupted and unable to work.

>"for some reason doctors and researchers are viewed as understanding that better than the public"

Because they have no excuse, a jury would agree they should've known better.

Do you have a reference for the 1 million number?

No, in my estimation I was being conservative and it is probably much higher though.

Edit: It is much easier to break things you don't understand than fix them.

I think you are overestimating how good conventional medical treatment is. Things like phage treatment are far more likely to help than harm. The reasons they don't happen are much closer to too much hassle, don't have time to bother.

I never made a comparison to conventional (ie, non-experimental) treatments. One thing the FDA does do ok is filter out things that cause lots of acute harm.

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