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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid of the result if we take someone wrapped in a comforting haze of dementia (I'm getting there) and force them into cold harsh reality. It may be as welcome a sobriety to an alcoholic. If the insurance stops paying does it become Flowers for Algernon?

We have several drugs that emulate dementia in various ways and call them recreational.

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Hmmm. "Comforting haze" seems dubious. My grandmother had Alzheimer's and at least from the outside it seemed like a bad LSD trip that never ended. She didn't understand what was happening and was scared.

Sample size of one and anecdotal of course, but...

Presumably this drug (like all the others) is dirt-cheap to synthesize and the only reason anything is expensive is a government granted monopoly that’s nominally encouraging innovation

I don't grant the assumption that innovation is helped with the current US system. It is entirely possible that it is actually hurt considerably compared to other systems. There is a massive incentive to prolong health problems if you make money on treating them. Even without people being evil, when the major learning signal (money) points constantly towards 'prolong the problem' it isn't hard to imagine that the system that evolves from it is actively worse than nearly any other system with a good loss function like 'health' or even just 'fame and notoriety for the scientists involved'

China is making huge investments in biotech, and its regulators tend to be more permissive than those in many Western countries. It would not surprise me if sooner or later, China begins to take the lead in medical innovation and the US is reduced to playing catch-up.

Of course, more permissive regulation means increased safety risks for consumers and clinical trial participants-but if you don’t live in China, that’s a price you won’t personally pay.

I want to agree with you but have other systems provided better drugs / research than the US? Afaik SOTA in anything medical is basically US researched but .. I haven't actually looked into it that much.

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