Clinical trials explained

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

winjim

Welcome yourself into the new modern crisis
Somebody needs to update this systematic review.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/
 

Beebo

Veteran
Also.
Wearing a parachute makes no difference if you can’t or don’t known how to pull the cord.
 

glasgowcyclist

Über Member
This is interesting because I’ve just been listening to an episode of a podcast by Tim Harford called Cautionary Tales, dealing with scientists who self-experiment.

He opens with the story of inventor Franz Reichelt who, in February 1912, wanted to test his novel "parachute suit" from a very tall structure and decided to use the Eiffel Tower. There is still a British Pathé newsreel film of the test available to view. Warning: it does not end well.

Other examples were a doctor who was treating gonorrhea sufferers. He took a sample of the infected pus from a patient and (look away now) injected it into his own penisxx(. If that wasn’t bad enough, it turned out the patient also has syphilis so the doctor suffered a lifetime of worsening health.

Link to podcast:
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/a-leap-of-faith-from-the-eiffel-tower#play
 

winjim

Welcome yourself into the new modern crisis
This is interesting because I’ve just been listening to an episode of a podcast by Tim Harford called Cautionary Tales, dealing with scientists who self-experiment.

He opens with the story of inventor Franz Reichelt who, in February 1912, wanted to test his novel "parachute suit" from a very tall structure and decided to use the Eiffel Tower. There is still a British Pathé newsreel film of the test available to view. Warning: it does not end well.

Other examples were a doctor who was treating gonorrhea sufferers. He took a sample of the infected pus from a patient and (look away now) injected it into his own penisxx(. If that wasn’t bad enough, it turned out the patient also has syphilis so the doctor suffered a lifetime of worsening health.

Link to podcast:
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/a-leap-of-faith-from-the-eiffel-tower#play

Nothing as extreme as that but I do have a few containers of mine and my family's precious bodily fluids dotted around the lab. Our daughter was very excited to learn that we'd sent aliquots of her urine around the world.
 

swansonj

Regular
Somebody needs to update this systematic review.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/

That is a gem - they've got the style perfectly in so many places.
 

winjim

Welcome yourself into the new modern crisis
That is a gem - they've got the style perfectly in so many places.

I seem to remember some time ago gently mocking someone on the main CC forum who was taking a BMJ Christmas article a bit too seriously.
 

slowmotion

Active Member
This is interesting because I’ve just been listening to an episode of a podcast by Tim Harford called Cautionary Tales, dealing with scientists who self-experiment.

He opens with the story of inventor Franz Reichelt who, in February 1912, wanted to test his novel "parachute suit" from a very tall structure and decided to use the Eiffel Tower. There is still a British Pathé newsreel film of the test available to view. Warning: it does not end well.

Other examples were a doctor who was treating gonorrhea sufferers. He took a sample of the infected pus from a patient and (look away now) injected it into his own penisxx(. If that wasn’t bad enough, it turned out the patient also has syphilis so the doctor suffered a lifetime of worsening health.

Link to podcast:
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/a-leap-of-faith-from-the-eiffel-tower#play

I have some sympathy for the poor man who caught syphilis. He was acting in a long and honourable scientific tradition....self experimentation. Plenty of medical scientists have experimented on themselves when they felt that subjecting strangers to test their theories would be too dangerous. Hats off to them.
 
Just heard something interesting on YouTube regarding trials. Apparently studies done on rats some time ago, testing for addiction, they put rats into a cage and gave them one water bottle and another water bottle laced with cocaine or heroin.

The rats tried the drug water and then kept going back to it.

However, someone else pointed out that rats are social animals and a cage wasn't a natural environment. So they put a load of toys, and other rats, in the same cage, and the rats didn't even want to drug water after one try. Their conclusion was that addiction doesn't depend on the availability of the drug, but has more to do with boredom/lack of stimuli/seclusion
 
Top Bottom