One of the most black pilling books on medical research I've ever read. That neurological diseases rely on tests since patients can go a long way before dying makes their outcomes much easier to game with more subjective tests and the theoretical upside of making fake treatments much more profitable with a predicted long life to continue using pharmaceutical treatments. The only light in this book is that such fraud is revealed, which at least shines a dim spotlight if not penetrating beam into the darkness of fraudulent medical research out there
Charles blackpiller
litsalonuser
Mar 13, 20264 comments
oogway19 days ago
On the subject of neurodegenerative diseases rip QURE, I only briefly looked at the company before it got murked but their AMT-130 gene therapy data looked fairly promising for delaying Huntington’s. In this case I think the regulatory bodies were too strict, especially when Vinay Prasad ordered them to do another phase 3 trial despite them not having the cash to do so. When it comes to the development of novel drugs I think there is an important balancing act that the FDA must play. Obviously you don’t want scam cos pumping out snake oil but sometimes delaying the pipeline for drugs that can actually help vast amounts of people does significant harm.
oogway19 days ago
Haven’t read the book but the amount of scam companies that exist in biotech is unreal (unclear MOAS, marginal efficacy, poor safety, etc). Hence why biotech is one of the few sectors where most competent investors are actually net short despite the obvious downsides of doing so
Uniqure is a funny one. They had a very small, pretty unconvincing trial for efficacy -- https://augurbio.substack.com/p/unmasking-amt-130-hope-hype-and-the? . They said the FDA said to run it that way and they'd get approval. The FDA said they never agreed to the trial design. It's sort of a he-said, she-said until someone drops meeting notes. I read part of this book (ended up DNFing it because the Lesne part bored me -- ultimately think it had minimal effect on Alz research (see comments: https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/sylvain-lesne-who-found-av56-accused-image-manipulation ) as the science had moved on during this time. I had much more fun reading about the fraudulent Cassava Sciences, and wish more of the book had been about them.
ahah this is what I get for not doing my research. Maybe I should’ve never doubted our god Dr. Prasad. I only heard about uniqure after the company dumped so I never did any post hoc analysis of their trials. Thanks for the info and crazy how the biotech cord and litsalon verse is converging.