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posted by martyb on Saturday May 02 2020, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the festina-lente dept.

With a major pandemic sweeping the world, the standard process of clinical trials for drug approval has come under criticism as a needless source of bureaucracy and delay. Drug discovery chemist Derek Lowe in a blog post explains how clinical trials for drug approval work and the reasons behind the various requirements that the FDA and equivalent organisations around the world generally put in place before approving a new drug. He explains how most of these apparently pointless bureaucratic hurdles are actually there to help protect the integrity of the scientific process and ensure that the human subjects undergoing the trials are treated ethically. While a case can be made for relaxing some of these safeguards, especially in this time of pandemic, it is probably not a good idea to do so without at least understanding what these safeguards are for.

Determining how much of a pharmaceutical is needed to prepare for the trial. Ensuring your are actually preparing just that drug and not a polymorph. Proper laboratory and manufacturing practices to ensure the desired drug is actually prepared without impurities and contaminants. Preparing a plan for a drug trial. Demographics — age, gender, weight, current medications being taken. Getting a representative distribution of these as participants. And there's much more.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03 2020, @10:48AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2020, @10:48AM (#989744) Journal

    saw a comment where someone asked the why of occupational regulations that seemed to not be needed because "wouldn't common sense keep that from happening", and the answer was "every regulation was because of at least one person's death". they don't seem so onerous in that light...

    Or because someone got bribed (like a 70 year phone monopoly) or needed to look like they were doing something (most nuclear power regulation and modern airport security). They don't seem so onerous in that light, amirite?