The problems and benefits of antique medicines are much more complicated.   
   Isn't there just a BIT of hypocrisy in endorsing generics like warfarin over   
   eliquis and niacin over lipitor while condemning ivermectin and   
   hydroxyquinone?  I wonder what the long term effect will be on the likes of   
   GNC, DSHEA and Prevention magasine.  If Biden is destined to emulate Carter,   
   I am reminded of Laeatrile.  First, if many of them work in thin, young   
   patients in third world countries, the same antique medicines are deadly with   
   America's older, more obese populations.  A lot of the antique medicines were   
   known to work on similar diseases before the pandemic and their postulation   
   was not as off the wall as some on the left suggest.  Further in a poor   
   country where the modern medicines are not fully available, they are worth   
   trying.  These are the same folks who holler at the right as anti-science on   
   climate but who flock to "home remedies" or at least OTC on many other   
   things.  In the soviet union, traditional medicine was often promoted by   
   bureacrats as a budget saving tool, and this has carried over to the USA in   
   recent years.   
      
      Further structual biology has allowed a lot of defunct old medicine to be   
   resurrected and repurposed, circumventing expensive trials. I have argued I   
   don't mind accupuncture but you better use modern sterilisation. In other   
   words, take something like the US Pharmacopoeia of a century ago, before the   
   FDA killed off a lot of tradional meds as "snake oil", and run everything   
   through structural biology screens and modern safety testing.  Pharmacopoeia   
   had a lot of European, AmerIndian and Asian traditional meds in it, so I   
   think it's a good starting point.  The maximum likelihood integral used to be   
   done by hand over the entire sample, but now could be done case by case using   
   symbolic manipulation - that's the adaptive trials that speed up remdesevir.   
   I'm not talking about loosening the standards but making the methods more   
   effective.  The simple principle is confidence level is a function of error   
   over the square root of sample size, if you reduce error, you can reduce   
   sample size which is the major cost driver in trials which in turn are THE   
   major cost driver in modern medicine.  A new drug costs a billion dollars   
   because of clin trials, but that includes collapsing the contingent claims   
   options tree for failed drugs into the successful ones.  Before Vioxx blew I   
   attended a panel organised by CMU MBAs at NYC Yale club where they discussed   
   how new math methods could produce cheaper and more effective trials.  After   
   Vioxx I met an investment banker who used to be a medical professor: he told   
   us his doc wanted to put him on Vioxx anticancer trials and he admonished his   
   doctor about the heart risk warnings.  One of my teachers did QC for the   
   nuclear navy and NASA and he, like the post Vioxx crowd, wants to make the   
   sample size much larger.   
      
      A lot of this hysteria is their reluctance to reform. Both Cailif under   
   Obama and Gottlieb under Trump made major strides, after prior strides were   
   overturned by the Vioxx debacle.  Cailif works for Google Verily and wants to   
   scan the internet for anecdotal trials.  There is a major industry in   
   clinical trials that is threatened. They are definitely part of the swamp. A   
   lot of them show up in political clubs of right and left to recruit test   
   subjects.  There was snake oil a century ago and the FDA was partly tight,   
   but it may have killed off the babies with the bath water. The rancour of   
   today is because both sides insist only THEY can be right, but that is not   
   how democracy and scientific progress works.   
      
      
   --   
   	 Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus   
     blog: panix.com/~vjp2/ruminatn.htm - = - web:  panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm   
      facebook.com/vasjpan2 - linkedin.com/in/vasjpan02 -  biostrategist.com   
     ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice.  Everything fully disclaimed.}---   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
   --   
   	 Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus   
     blog: panix.com/~vjp2/ruminatn.htm - = - web:  panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm   
      facebook.com/vasjpan2 - linkedin.com/in/vasjpan02 -  biostrategist.com   
     ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice.  Everything fully disclaimed.}---   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)