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Comment by onetimemanytime | Hacker News Reader

suppose X is dying and everyone in his family circle consents, why not try it? Being an emergency and all. Nothing to lose

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It isn't a choice of aye or nay to one drug; there are a suite of drugs that either should or probably do help with COVID-19. If they are going to pick something randomly, chloroquine is probably a better choice based on Chinese trials.

The speed with which things that help against this coronavirus are being found really is impressive. It is good to be facing this in the modern era instead of 50 years ago.

Well, they faced something comparable 102 years ago ... The world didn't end, though it did suffer greatly.

If going experimental, Camostat and E-64d are better choices to blockade ACE2 and TMPRSS2. Chloroquine has much more serious potential side-effects including irreversible, rapid macular degeneration where someone might reasonably prefer not to continue living because of them.

America has "a right to try," so patients with no chance could ask for this.

> why not try it?

I imagine not everyone feels comfortable potentially killing someone with a creation of theirs that they're not confident in, even if others are willing to risk it.

It's the other way around though: it's not them or their creation that is killing the patient, it's the virus. There's a big difference between their creation being unable to save the patient and actively killing them.

That's the thing with giving people stuff that hasn't been tested on anyone before: It might actively kill them, not just not prevent them from being killed by the virus.

That's a very optimistic viewpoint. In reality, it is certainly possible that their creation could kill the patient before the virus does.

If everyone always demanded the "best" treatment according to our current knowledge, we might never find out there was anything better than leeches...

Informed consent of X or X's health POA determines what happens, not random doctors.

Not a doctor but if X is dying, wouldn't it be too late for antibodies to do their work?

e.g. if dying from the immune response or a co-infection.

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