This is the first story I can ever remember in which news-worthy, medical-trial stories ended on a negative note. Considering the amount of testing that must be going on out there, the lack of failure-centric stories strikes me as pretty unusual.The death of 11 babies born to women who were given Viagra during a drug trial has led to the termination of the experiment – and an anxious wait for other mothers involved.
The trial was designed to test whether sildenafil, a medication sold under the brand name Viagra, could help boost babies’ growth in the womb.
The research was carried out at 10 hospitals across the Netherlands and involved women whose placentas had been underperforming.
As Thomas Edison was said to have said approximately, "I didn't fail 2,000 times to make a light bulb. I discovered 2,000 ways that didn't work."
You can’t remember pharmaceutical experiment failure for good reason.
ReplyDeleteThe key is right in your linked article.
See if you can figure it out.
“In an interview with the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant, the leader of the research, Wessel Ganzevoort, a gynaecologist, said: “We wanted to show that this is an effective way to promote the growth of the baby. But the opposite happened. I am shocked. The last thing you want is to harm patients.”
Here’s another hint:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2016/11/23/five-lessons-from-todays-pharma-failures/#70d1e6211a31
BTW -
DeleteRemember the Physician Desk Reference?
When you look up some “powerful” drug your asked to take and it says death occurred in only 1 out of 500 cases. Is that failure or success?
Is sperm donation hence in vitro fertilisation legal already?
ReplyDelete