In the United States there are countless regulatory hurdles that must be overcome for new drugs and new medical treatments to make their way to the masses. Not so in China!
Check out Beike BioTech, a bio-technology company in China that has “…treated over 2,000 patients with stem cell injections for diseases like Alzheimers, Ataxia, Autism, ALS, Brain Trauma, Cerebral Infarction, Cerebral Hemorrhage, Cerebral Palsy, Guillain-Barre, Encephalatropy, and Spinal Cord Injury”.
In the engineering world there is a common and powerful custom of developing solutions to problems simply by trying lots of things and seeing what works. Because of intense regulation in the United States it is not possible to just try random procedures or drugs on people to see what happens. In many cases this is for good reason, but a huge price is paid for this as valuable treatments are delayed or not even attempted.
In China, on the other hand, we are witnessing the power of trial and error medicine when it is not denied by regulation. People from all over the world are flying to China to companies such as Beike to pay for experimental and unproven medical treatment for some of the world’s most terrifying diseases. Beike even admits on its own website that the benefits of their stem cell treatments may be questionable for many of their patients. But if you have the money and you have no other options to treat your severely debilitating illness then Beike is happy to give you that small glimmer of hope.
Using humans as laboratory mice certainly has its moral hazards, but it also holds great power as a tool for medical innovation. The United States might win the game of morals, but we can increasingly expect many of the greatest achievements in the game of medical breakthroughs to come from places like China where morals are seen differently.
On a related note I was recently speaking to my neighbor who is a specialist in developing drugs for cancer treatment. He will soon be moving back to China after living in the United States for 20 years. Why? Because he says he can’t get anything done here in the United States. By going to China he will have an ample supply of patients to try his drugs on and few regulations to limit his ability to experiment.
Comments
“In many cases this is for good reason”? No, the regulatory board has to support denial and allowance of new procedures and trials with evidence. Stem cells form tumours extremely readily; that isn’t a “small glimmer of hope”, that’s an extreme chance of making the condition worse. ‘First, do no harm’ may not fly in the Chinese devalued ‘population fodder’ system of human experimentation, but giving value to human life is not a US pitfall. Rarely is there call to give kudos to the US (especially in science), but the application of responsible scientific ethics is darned important! Usually, I’d let some misapprehension on the topic go, but what China is doing is neither worth the cost of uncounted death-tolls, nor the damage to medicine by supplying baseless, poorly-scientific ‘cures’ to the desperate.
Normally, I’d support jstuart’s Liberalism as well, but desperate and ill-informed people just DON’T make rational judgements. If these ‘cures’ have a 98% chance of death and a 2% chance of POSSIBLY making the condition slightly better than regular treatment, no rational person should choose to do it. If they had a rational reason to do it, they could convince the US regulatory board to start a pilot trial with them in it.
What I see as immoral is Big Brother prohibiting consenting adults from making informed decisions about their medical treatment, including risky treatments for otherwise fatal or debilidating diseases. Not only is China pioneering treatments and becoming a technological leader in the process, but providing there is transparency and professionalism, they are humanely helping to deal with tragic medical problems.