Someone Teach Doctors GoFundMe!!!
- Chief Noise Maker
- Dec 21, 2020
- 2 min read
Recently, I couldn't help but run across a video of Senate testimony. Doctors were pushing to make an existing drug be repurposed for COVID-19 prevention and treatment. You can find the full footage below. While there are many things to question from the testimony. I couldn't help but recognize one economic argument being presented by the doctors.
In order to push wide adoption of an existing drug for new uses, you need studies to be performed on the existing drug for the new use. These doctors seem to believe that there are only two ways of getting these studies to occur.
First and foremost is to get the inventor of the drug to pay for the medical trials. This unfortunately won't work if the drug is no longer under patent as is the case for many potentially viable drugs. Without the economic incentive to pay for expensive Random Control Trials (RCTs), there really is no way a drug company would fork over that kind of money out of the kindness of their hearts.
This leaves the doctors to believe that the only path left is to go before congress for publicity, support, and funding. If you have not heard about this Senate testimony, I would suggest their hopes of wider publicity are not promising. Furthermore, the very fact that a video which has zero anti-vaccination testimony is titled as anti-vaccination can assure you that there is not bi-partisan support. The road to any government funding looks bleak at most.
With these basic economic and political issues, doctors have to start thinking differently about obtaining funding. The doctors go out of their way to suggest that our treatment of potential COVID solutions has been astoundingly limited, but I would consider the doctors treatment of potential funding for studies of COVID solutions quite limited.
There are scores of people who successfully run GoFundMe campaigns for both joyous celebrations and tragic accidents. In their testimony, the doctors suggested that funding starting at $100,000 and up to $2.5 million would allow for important studies to be run on their suggested COVID treatments. If companies can crowdfund $20 million dollar projects for digital watches, I believe that our doctors can crowdfund $2 million for studies on possible COVID treatments. Radiohead was able to make more money than all of their previous albums combined as one of the first bands to crowdfund an album. Plenty of bloggers, vloggers, and podcasters are able to sustain on crowdfunding. We need our doctors to start thinking outside the medical economic box when there are global pandemics at stake.
Important Message: We do not support the anti-vaccine movement or any particular use of drugs. This article is not medical advice. The writers at Irreverent Noise have no medical experience. All opinions on medical treatments discussed in the blog or video are not medical advice. Do not administer any treatments based on this blog or videos attached.
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