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Comment by bayesianhorse | Hacker News Reader

So, the big news here is that pharmaceutical researchers (researching small molecule drugs like THC) are largely funded by companies who earn their money from a large number of small molecule drugs. Vice doesn't actually compare pro-legalizing and anti-legalizing scientists.

I'll also get on the record that I would not recommend using THC containing products for pain relief without medical supervision or advice.

Don't get me wrong: funding bias is a problem, but it gets overstated. The scientific process has to deal with much worse problems, like personal egos, evil publishing, malstructured career mechanics and outright fraud. Still, "paying for the right results" is a lot harder than it is often taken to be.

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"Medical supervision", in my case, has been "let's see what these pills do for you" -- really just gatekeeper making educated guesses.

The worst THC is likely to do is give somebody a bad trip, like Maureen Dowd's recent venture: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/06/09/why-eati...

Actual physiological harm shouldn't be a concern.

There is direct physical harm from THC. Not for everyone, not always, but it would be naive to assume there isn't.

Indirectly it's a bad idea to manage pain by just one way, be it pills or THC or whatever. The danger is that the conditions change or that the pain is telling you that you need additional medical attention.

> Don't get me wrong: funding bias is a problem, but it gets overstated.

Hardly. It is in fact far worse than you are attempting to imply, and is covered in detail in Bad Pharma[1] which is well worth reading.

A snippet: "Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments."

[1] http://www.badscience.net/2012/09/heres-the-intro-to-my-new-...

This is mostly true for drugs where there is almost zero public interest. And even then I don't want to overinterpret "evil intentions" when it just might be a case of honest researchers not doing a perfect job in an imperfect world.

When there is public interest, independent studies are conducted.

Your comment is terribly misinformed about the reality of drug research. I'd urge you to at least read that opening paragraph I linked to up-thread from the 'Bad Pharma' book.

If you have an interest in this area I would imagine you'd want to read the book to fully understand how broken the current system is.

It's not all doom-and-gloom though; a movement to try to get back to a scientific approach in drug research is continuing with http://www.alltrials.net/.

Even knowing the book, I think it is terribly "misinformed" to describe the current drug research/development as something other than a "scientific approach". There is no clear picture of what good scientific research looks like, at least not in the real world, and not if you take the financial picture into account, and the benefit of developing new therapies.

The ready assumption of evil intentions can hardly be described as "scientific" either. Pharma companies are taking on development risks which no public health system is willing to stomach.

I don't know anything about these researchers and the article did nothing to change that. It threw out some heavy allegations with no evidence and no indication that they'd done any real investigation of anything.

I'm filing this under clickbait. I don't know if it happens to be true or not, but the article did not give any real evidence.

Marijuana is proven to be more safe than alcohol. Say what you will about the risks, but what about personal freedom? Why do we need the government involved in this decision at all?

What you say may be true, but I would much rather have public outcry against this practice than the opposite of overlooking the issue because there are bigger fish to fry.

There is no medical supervision for using THC. There are no guidelines that doctors follow or recommendations beyond recommending vaporizing or using edibles.

Not entirely true for non-pain relief uses. Dronabinol, synthetic THC, is sometimes given to treat nausea and vomiting in patients receiving chemotherapy.

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