Should A Christian Participate In A Drug Trial?

[Mr. M]

If your physician recommended you for a drug trial for an illness with no current treatment option, would you participate?

I know this is personal, but if you are willing to share, have you ever done so, and what was the experience like?

What about participation for a financial incentive?

[FJK]

This comes to mind as I think about this:   Matthew 4:7  "Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

 

I think it may come down to your actual motive for participation, an attempt to save your life when other efforts have failed or an honest effort to help find a cure for something that has none being different than just some other desires might be.

In any event, something to pray about before doing.

[Neighbor]

15 hours ago, Mr. M said:

If your physician recommended you for a drug trial for an illness with no current treatment option, would you participate?

I know this is personal, but if you are willing to share, have you ever done so, and what was the experience like?

What about participation for a financial incentive?

1, Sure.

2, Just a matter of having uneventful blood sample draws

3, Was an automatic thing a mere $10, was not a personal incentive to participate.

4, All advances, all treatments, have to start somewhere, and on some life form. 

[OneLight]

15 hours ago, Mr. M said:

If your physician recommended you for a drug trial for an illness with no current treatment option, would you participate?

I know this is personal, but if you are willing to share, have you ever done so, and what was the experience like?

What about participation for a financial incentive?

In 2000, I was informed I had Hep C.  At that time, there were no treatments and my Dr suggested I volunteer for a trial study.  I was informed of all the hazards involved, thought about it and decided to try it.  I had to take two different medications,  an injection and a pill daily.  The treatment went on for 6 months where 4 of the months I was bed ridden.  At the end of the trial, my count went from the millions to undetectable ... for three months.  After three months, the Hep C was back.  It was then that I was informed that the pill was fake, but if I wanted to do another treatment, they would ensure I had the real medications, so I agreed.  Another 4 months of torture, but it worked.  If it were not for the trials I went through, the data gathered to make better medicines would not of been there, so I was more than happy to do my part.  Now, the treatments lasts only weeks and are noninvasive, meaning, no real side affects.

I received no money for my participation, but being free from Hep C is worth more than what they could of paid me.

[ayin jade]

Before I became a Christian, when I was in pharmacy school, I was asked by a fellow student if I wanted to be in a drug trial for a new type of migraine treatment. At the time, I suffered around 4 migraines a month. I looked in to the drug trial and opted not to do it. I tend to get bad side effects from medications. Turns out the medication was imitrex. 

I see nothing about doing a medication trial, with or without being paid for it, that would be against a Christian way of living. 

[Mr. M]

4 minutes ago, ayin jade said:

Turns out the medication was imitrex. 

Is this good or bad?

[com7fy8]

16 hours ago, Mr. M said:

If your physician recommended you for a drug trial for an illness with no current treatment option, would you participate?

I would need to investigate it. And, in any case do what >

16 hours ago, FJK said:

In any event, something to pray about before doing.

If you wish to get into how I have been learning to evaluate something like this >

I am human; so I can fool my own self into trusting the wrong people > in Jeremiah 17:9 we have,

"The heart is deceitful above all things".

So, my unsaved doctor at any time could be fooling himself in any way. So could unsaved drug researchers. Ones can deceive or misunderstand and misuse facts.

And I myself can be hasty and not make sure with God. Even what looks like sure evidence can be faulty or deliberately a trick, as in the case of Joshua 9:1-14. The Jewish leaders did not make sure with God, and that got them in trouble.

But if I was sure to die or suffer some other medical loss in a short while, and I could help develop a cure for the cause of my problem, I might be willing to somehow sacrifice and risk myself and health to help others. Jesus gave His life for us; so I see that it could be good to make a sacrifice for others.

"We also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (in 1 John 3:16)

But be careful who I trust and depend on.

"Thus says the LORD:

'Cursed is the man who trusts in man

And makes flesh his strength,

Whose heart departs from the LORD.'" 

(Jeremiah 17:5)

Not all medical people are saved. So, if medical people are not saved, whose children are they? John 8:44

So, I need to be prayerfully careful about anything which comes through people who are not God's children.

Ones can unknowingly be going by what is incomplete or inaccurate information. And ones can be somehow disabled from doing things right and informing me with what I should know.

Plus, ones can have motives for arranging things to control me for what they want to use me for. 

But I have hurt my own self much more than medical people have, in my case . . . to my knowledge. And I would say secular medical people have done me much more good than harm.

And Jesus does send His sheep among wolves, in order to reach people for Him. And He guarantees He will take care of us, and be ready to love and forgive.

Edited March 24, 2023 by com7fy8

[ayin jade]

9 minutes ago, Mr. M said:

Is this good or bad?

Imitrex was the first of the injectable migraine treatments. It is a good medicine for migraine sufferers. 

 

[farouk]

44 minutes ago, com7fy8 said:

I would need to investigate it. And, in any case do what >

If you wish to get into how I have been learning to evaluate something like this >

I am human; so I can fool my own self into trusting the wrong people > in Jeremiah 17:9 we have,

"The heart is deceitful above all things".

So, my unsaved doctor at any time could be fooling himself in any way. So could unsaved drug researchers. Ones can deceive or misunderstand and misuse facts.

And I myself can be hasty and not make sure with God. Even what looks like sure evidence can be faulty or deliberately a trick, as in the case of Joshua 9:1-14. The Jewish leaders did not make sure with God, and that got them in trouble.

But if I was sure to die or suffer some other medical loss in a short while, and I could help develop a cure for the cause of my problem, I might be willing to somehow sacrifice and risk myself and health to help others. Jesus gave His life for us; so I see that it could be good to make a sacrifice for others.

"We also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (in 1 John 3:16)

But be careful who I trust and depend on.

"Thus says the LORD:

'Cursed is the man who trusts in man

And makes flesh his strength,

Whose heart departs from the LORD.'" 

(Jeremiah 17:5)

Not all medical people are saved. So, if medical people are not saved, whose children are they? John 8:44

So, I need to be prayerfully careful about anything which comes through people who are not God's children.

Ones can unknowingly be going by what is incomplete or inaccurate information. And ones can be somehow disabled from doing things right and informing me with what I should know.

Plus, ones can have motives for arranging things to control me for what they want to use me for. 

But I have hurt my own self much more than medical people have, in my case . . . to my knowledge. And I would say secular medical people have done me much more good than harm.

And Jesus does send His sheep among wolves, in order to reach people for Him. And He guarantees He will take care of us, and be ready to love and forgive.

We should trust the Lord, indeed.

The Lord also uses means.......

[com7fy8]

@OneLight that "fake pill" probably is what they call a "placebo". 

A placebo can be used as the comparison pill, in drug research. It has everything in it, except the medical substance which is being tested to go into a pill.

They might give you the placebo, to see what effects its chemicals have, if any, then give you a pill with the placebo stuff plus the tested medical substance, to see if the tested drug chemical makes any difference.

If the drug makes no difference, compared with the placebo, they know the drug does not work. But if the pill with the drug helps to cure the person, but the placebo did nothing, this can mean the medical test chemical does work.

But the tested drug might cause some other effect! It might be good for something else. Or, its effect might be harmful. And since they already found how the placebo's chemicals did not harm the person or produce other effects, they have evidence of what the test drug can cause. 

In your case, may be they used the placebo first along with the injection, so they could see what the injection alone could do. And indeed it seems it helped to reduce your count, but not permanently. But then they gave you the pill with the medicine being tested in pill form, and the effect was permanent, it seems

So, the placebo multi-tasked, in this case - - - I see to be possible.

The placebo helped to show what the injection by itself could do. But also it helped compare injection alone with injection plus the tested pill med.

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by com7fy8