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Notes -
The argument against that is that if I have funding and I think I won’t next week, if I get a reprieve by “putting medical devices in bodies”, then I might just do that. Or maybe a drug that needs to be strictly monitored, again, if I will lose everything if I don’t and I get to maintain funding and my job if I just start the trials and hope that the funding doesn’t dry up, why not?
And this would actually be worse for those patients who are being asked to start said trials knowing that the funds might not be there to finish. I’ll be honest, any doctor at the moment trying to recruit people for a NIH trial on a serious disease like cancer knowing that the funding won’t be there should have his license yanked. We know these trials will be stopped, and we know that those recruits will waste time and possibly risk health doing a trial that will stop. And those patients lose time for treatment.
That’s where ripping off the bandage helps. We know the trials are stopping mid trial so people signing up now should know better.
We're talking about months-long trials that were already ongoing when everything was suddenly put on hold with no forewarning. Obviously no one should be starting any more trials for the time being; and doubly-obviously, any doctors trying to blackmail the government by suddenly adding dangerous procedures to an ongoing trial should be sued with extreme prejudice. (They shouldn't be hard to catch, the whole deal with clinical studies that get government funds is that you register what you said you were going to use the money for in advance.)
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