advancednano : Comment to CNN about how far you would go for health?

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Comment to CNN about how far you would go for health?

reposted from advancednano.blogspot.com

This week (Dec 11-14, 2006) CNN's show Anderson Cooper 360 asks the question how far would you go for Health and Well Being? This link is a place where you can provide feedback.

My questions are

1. What is wrong with our society that we have to go outside the United States for better, newer or cheaper treatments for Health and Well being?

A clear example of what is wrong is people like Leon Kass, advisor to George Bush, who has religious and gender biases and does not want advances to change how much death there is or how soon it happens. He even questions the advances in the 20th century extending life expectancy.

2. Why is the FDA approval and the scientific research not adjusted to achieve faster results and approvals ? The system needs to take into account the risks that an individual already faces from ineffective treatments. We should not have delays that do not result in actual increases in safety.
FDA has just today proposed a new investigational drug rule to make it easier for those with no other treatment option to try drugs that have not been approved yet.

3. We need to focus medical research guided by metrics for results in extending lifespan and improved health. There is too much money going into treatments that are not improving lifespan but which replace a marginal effective but profitable drug for treating some symptom. Too much just flows to institutions that have historically received money but which are not measured by the results that they have delivered.

4. There is also the budget tension between hospices and costs for those who are sick and research to actually cure aging and disease. The bulk of the money for medical research should be focused on impacting aging processes and resistance and recuperation from disease. The allocation should be made at the top level. Budget $X for underlying causes of aging and interventions, C$ for disease cures, Y$ for symptom management and Z$ for hospice care. The X$ amount is far too small and often gets diverted into the other buckets.

Published Monday, December 11, 2006 11:03 PM by advancednano

Tags: life extension, FDA, anti-aging, medicine, health

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	Afn wrote on December 13, 2006 8:04 AM Some of the lethargy of the current FDA approval process stems from a history of regulation. Drugs and chemicals hailed as cures and advanced progress can and do have long-term unknown effects. DDT for example, was catastrophic to the environment, at the time it was released it was considered a miracle pesticide. More money is starting to flow into regenerative research. Policy makers may not want to support blue sky projects, or support research that can radically change what we know as aging, or prevent it. If aging was succesfully stopped or retarded to stop all noticable signs and symptoms of aging, or even reverse the process, the result would have massive socioeconomic impacts. Once the science shows that rengeration and whole body regeneration is possible, it will be with in our lifetimes that the probverbial can of worms is open, once and for all.
	advancednano wrote on December 13, 2006 1:14 PM DDT should not have been completely banned. DDT was and is highly effective in killing mosquitos. DDT could and should be used in Africa to kill the Malaria carrying mosquitos. The current expert opinion by the World Health Org is that DDT should be used for indoor spraying. DDT does have its downsides but it saved far more lives than it killed. It could save more lives in Africa now. We have made progress against Malaria in Africa with drugs but it would go far faster with DDT. Also, the Malaria and the mosquitos make the HIV problem worse as well. The control of products and processes needs to be more pragmatic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Overall_Effectiveness_of_DDT
	Gully Foyle wrote on December 13, 2006 4:02 PM Ditto on the DDT, advancednano.
	EschewObfuscation wrote on December 15, 2006 8:14 AM I agree that it shouldn't have been banned for use in malaria control, but if you look down that page you'll see that many mosquitoes are now resistant.