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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Cool, I was hoping something like this would happen. Currently if a patient has a disease that we know we have nothing to fight, patients don’t really have a good way to just try something, anything, take a shot in the dark, better than just laying down your arms and dying with ammo still in your weapon just because we can’t see the target, a hail Mary play, anything, just anything:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/HealthPolicy/60419?xid=NL_breakingnews_2016-09-23&eun=g760153d0r">http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/HealthPolicy/60419?xid=NL_breakingnews_2016-09-23&eun=g760153d0r</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OK so we see the downside: possible bad actors pushing some goofy useless pharmaceutical product for profit. So I thought of an idea. We could take all the hopeless cases, get them to sign up for something, anything. Then we get a board of overseers, non-professional, volunteers perhaps, nobody with any possible route to profit, just observers and advisors. We open up some kind of web-based public data site, so that everyone can view the database. We include what meds the patient consumed, and perhaps some kind of database to describe the vital stats, the outcome, etc.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The task would be large-scale pattern recognition, the kind that cannot be readily done by machine by known means, but a million pairs of eyes might be able to extract a pattern. We could number the medications, perhaps have advisors to steer the patient away from off-label pharmas that would make any known medical condition worse (if the patient had hypertension for example, that patient’s right-to-try package would eschew stimulants.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>One I have wondered about for a long time: those steroids that professional sports people are supposed to not take but we know they do. What if… a terminal heart patient is given big doses of that? If the patient is spinning into the ground anyway and we know what will happen if we stand around and do nothing, why not give him that? If he eagerly volunteers and we don’t really know if it will help, why not just try something, anything? A wild shot in the dark is better than dying with unfired ammo, ja?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>