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Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

How would you let the market sort out what works in terms of life-extension drugs? How would you measure that without well-structured trials?

People love their dogs and are willing to spend large amounts of money on them - how do you prevent people from selling them snake oil?

On top of that, we're talking about the first-ever drug approved solely for the purpose of life extension - yes it's in dogs, but it's a topic being heavily pursued in humans as well. While the approach taken here isn't directly relevant to people, one can imagine that developing this class of drugs in animals could lead to useful information on how to do so in humans, but only if there's actual evidence to prove their validitiy.

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I propose treating all animal medication as supplements. Safety (including safety when consumed as food for livestock medications) is required but not efficacy.

And given the fact that people have the legal authority to euthanize their pets on demand, it seems pretty silly that we are spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money ensuring they don't get fed snake oil.

That doesn't really follow. I have the legal authority to pay a junk yard to smash my car into a tiny cube, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be protected from auto body shops selling me fake repairs and non-functional parts.

And body shops don't have to go through a years long and multiple million dollar certification process. They can open up pretty much with no oversight and you are free to sue if they rip you off. Sounds like this model would work just fine for dog medicine too.

Are we making a good trade-off if that protection means preventing lifesaving treatments from reaching the market for decades or more? Does the risk the part might not work somehow justify the loss of life due to the absence of a lifesaving treatment?

Wouldn’t we learn a lot more about the effects of these experimental treatments if we allowed the willing to take them voluntarily?

> Wouldn’t we learn a lot more about the effects of these experimental treatments if we allowed the willing to take them voluntarily?

In the case of life-extension treatments, no - we would learn much less if we allowed people to give them to their pets voluntarily.

The problem is that what you're testing for is very difficult to measure, so you need a well-run study like the one that Loyal has done here. If people just give them to their dogs without the structure of a trial, you'll never get the kind of data you need to conclusive prove life-extending effects, and because companies can now sell without such a trial, you eliminate the incentives to invest the time, money and effort into that kind of a trial.

The people benefiting from from these millions are tax payers just like you. You may have differing priorities but that in no way gives you the right to decide what public money is spent on. You're expressing a very self-centered view. Try to step outside your own needs for a moment and understand that everyone has their own rich lives, desires, and needs and that they are all just as valid as yours are.

> You may have differing priorities but that in no way gives you the right to decide what public money is spent on.

Disagree. Public money is subject to the public process, which includes debating about and voting on how resources are spent. Don't shout down people who are participating in the process.

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