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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 16 2017, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the its-the-way-that-you-do-it dept.

Questionable herpes vaccine research backed by tech heavyweight Peter Thiel may have jeopardized $15 million in federal research funding to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. That's according to documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by The State Journal Register.

In August, Kaiser Health News reported that Thiel and other conservative investors had contributed $7 million for the live-but-weakened herpes virus vaccine, developed by the late SIU researcher William Halford. The investments came after Halford and his private company, Rational Vaccines, had begun conducting small clinical trials in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. With the off-shore location, Rational Vaccines' trial skirted federal regulations and standard safety protocols for human trials, including having approval and oversight from an institutional review board (IRB).

Experts were quick to call the unapproved trial "patently unethical," and researchers rejected the data from publication, calling the handling of safety issues "reckless." The government of St. Kitts opened an investigation into the trial and reported that health authorities there had been kept in the dark.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/university-could-lose-millions-from-unethical-research-backed-by-peter-thiel/


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:14PM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Thursday November 16 2017, @08:14PM (#597865)

    Yeah, it's not bogus at all. It's absolutely a concern over ethics, and you just proved our point by showing a rather stark lack of ethics and a for-profit infection in the bureaucracy we have. Already know that, tell us something new. But we do appreciate you posting it.

    Investors always challenge everything, because they only have ONE concern: profitability. Ethics, humanity, accountability, all go out the window, and are subjugated by Capitalism. As ethics and accountability nearly always hurts profit, at least in the eyes of the sociopathic avaricious parasites infecting humanity (aka investors). It's like mob mentality where a person might normally be fine, but when presented with decisions over an investment, promptly lose their humanity in the face of lost profits.

    You love competition and the myth of the free market so much, so why did they choose the Caribbean again? That's right, to make their principled stand against the problematic ethics and their application in the U.S? Bullshit. Like somebody else pointed out, they could just choose a more progressive country. Instead of going to any other major 1st world country, they decide to go to a backwater island with the tiniest fraction of medical bureaucracy to be found. Then they lied to that tiny bureaucracy to be freed from it.

    If they had a legitimate case, especially as investors, they would've chosen a country where they could actually bring a product to market after enough proper science that convinced a 1st world country. This was just a waste of fucking money while they "tilt at windmills" fighting the FDA.

    “The FDA is standing in the way, and Americans are going to hear about this and demand action.”

    Yeah, only if they can show a real product, done with real science, within a medical community that could be trusted. Otherwise, the American people are just going to see a pharma drug produced under almost no oversight beyond the oversight of the investors themselves. Uh huh, the American people are just so trusting of pharma companies and their investors right? If they had anything to begin with, they could have a European pharma company bring it to market in the EU. When Americans consistently hear of friends and relatives "across the pond" living better lives with a good treatment for herpes, THAT will motivate them to demand action. Although as I say that, I giggle a little bit in a morbidly depressed way, at the very idea that anybody in power gives a shit what the people think anymore.

    No, this was an issue of ethics from the very beginning, and specifically, the ethics that should be able to constrain investors, and that investors don't want constraints when going after profits. After all, anything that reduces profits is wrong when the predominant ethics on the planet are driven by Capitalism. It's not might makes right, but profits make right.

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    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 17 2017, @12:53AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 17 2017, @12:53AM (#598001) Journal

    You love competition and the myth of the free market so much, so why did they choose the Caribbean again? That's right, to make their principled stand against the problematic ethics and their application in the U.S? Bullshit.

    It's cheap, near the US by vicinity, and not subject to US regulation.