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Comment by lubujackson | Hacker News Reader

Just seeing this for the first time, and I love the hacker ethos displayed here. Obviously there are Risks Involved especially for health care, but I appreciate the well-researched and documented reasoning behind their solutions. Let the people control their own lives a bit more.

To me, the hacker mentality has, at its root, been about more about shortcutting red tape and discarding the guardrails the gov't put in place "for your own good". Often that comes hand in hand with rule breaking and illegal actions.

But since healthcare has been so fully co-opted by moneyed interests it is good to see things like this and "medical vacations" grow in popularity - not because they are great solutions but because they underline how thoroughly the current system has screwed the pooch and will hopefully lead to real change.

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I know someone whose wife was judged terminal, and he took her to Mexico for some unapproved cancer therapies. This is not a rich guy.

(She's dead now, as you might have guessed.)

>judged terminal ... She's dead now

What is the intended message of this short story?

"Don't go to Mexico".

Or if you go to Mexico you die.

don’t waste your last days with quacks

Alternatively phrased: waste your last days with mainstream quacks with an MD.

And I know someone who went to Mexico to get unapproved stem cell therapies when US doctors said he'd never walk again and now he's walking just fine. Anecdotes are just random stories you hear along the way.

The point being: there's already a right to try unapproved therapies, even if it sometimes requires extra travel. People who aren't wealthy manage to try them.

As for "anecdotes" -- do you have any actual data? Neither do I.

I can't quite discern the subtext here but I will say that for many people international travel is not an appropriate solution for access to health care. People who are elderly, very sick, or without a passport, travel could be infeasible.

And beyond the logistical challenges, I think it should be fair to say axiomatically that international travel is not an adequate solution to healthcare access.

"right to try" seems to be enshrined in some US laws. Were you not aware of that?

https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-expanded-access-and...

as for "travel could be infeasible" : I'd suggest you call up some clinic in Mexico and pretend to be terminal and unable to travel. See if they come up with some solution for you.

That makes as much sense as saying "marijuana is already legalized in the US - you just need to buy a plane ticket to Amsterdam". The whole point of having your rights in certain jurisdiction is that you didn't have to flee that jurisdiction to exercise the rights.

Marijuana IS pretty much legalized in the US.

As for "access to healthcare" : have you heard of Right To Try? Google it.

No need to be condescending. Yes, I know about it - I know it only appeared recently in 2018 too. And also you have to be literally dying to use it. If you're not dying yet - but may be severely disabled, in tremendous pain, or otherwise suffering greatly, but if you're not nearly dead yet - no right to try for you.

> Marijuana IS pretty much legalized in the US.

"Pretty much" does a lot of work here given it's still Schedule I on federal level.

Sigh. There's always something you can be unhappy about. You must spend all your time on it.

That's a strange reply. You said something incorrect, I corrected it, but now you imply that knowing the correct facts is some kind of personal flaw?

the personal flaw is not getting irony, and feeling you have to respond with Earnestness to it.

From a random third person perspective here: if your “Google it” comment was intended as irony, it was not at all successful at that.

if you're actually a random third person, you need to find a hobby and stop interjecting yourself into other people's conversations.

that you're having on a public website? why should they do that?

> Marijuana IS pretty much legalized in the US

BATFE form 4473 states the following:

> Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.

We have state police doing literal highway robberies and stealing cash from state legal businesses.

https://reason.com/2022/02/04/a-california-sheriff-remains-f...

Just ask poor Hunter Biden what the potential ramifications are….

(Note: I neither endorse nor condemn him or his actions)

The trick, and a lot of people are bad at this, is knowing/understanding whether the treatment is likely to help, but is banned/unapproved because it's too new, has bad side effects, or doesn't actually work. Mexico isn't likely to have better cancer treatments than the US, but something like stem cell treatments are just not approved yet because of regulatory hurdles, not because they aren't liable to not help.

That's it exactly.

If your point is that people who aren't wealthy have a right to try unapproved therapies, why throw in the quip about Mexican healthcare killing people, and in such a way as to make it sound like that's the expected outcome? You could have just left off the parenthetical and left it at that.

It's one data point, so our prior is "death." Unless you have other data points?

Stem cells aren’t laetrile.

She would have almost certainly been dead either way though. I’m all for allowing people to take these long shot bets. It’s their life.

> more about shortcutting red tape and discarding the guardrails the gov't put in place "for your own good".

Well, this really is for the good of the vast majority of people. The problem is that this also applies to a minority of people, who have the skills to research thing and make educated decisions about things.

It's not a bad general rule, but maybe it should be overridable in certain circumstances, e.g. when you are experimenting on yourself.

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