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And this is bad? The healthcare industry desperately needs experimentation and cheaper options. If a product works, people will continue to buy it. Welcome to how markets work.

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Experiments aren’t cheap. Patients aren’t in a good position to evaluate if a product is working or not. This is especially true when they are emotionally or personally involved in the outcome - everyone believes they are an outlier.

Disagree. People evaluate almost literally every other single product they buy.

Almost every other product they buy is not a matter of life or death where they are personally emotionally invested in the outcome.

Also, how does the market work if the customers die (because the treatment is a sham) before they can warn other potential customers? What stops me from peddling snake oil to every dying person, knowing that other dying people will never hear about how it doesn't work?

I agree, but there's an even more compelling argument in my opinion. Government (which is basically an abstraction for "another person that isn't me") has no right to tell me what I can and can't put into my own body.

Unless those other people are directly entangled with your finances and responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of you and others.

Agreed 100%.

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