That's a very real concern. A friend of mine has a higher than normal threshold for pain and have permanent injuries as a result. Among other things has walked around on a broken foot for months and failed to register a back injury. All of this then escalated to the point where she feels the pain, but the injuries have become permanent.
I have a similar condition. For me, the issue isn't so much the sensation of the permanent injuries themselves, but rather the constant physical fatigue that comes with them. Since doctors tend to rely heavily on those 1-to-10 pain scales with the little face expressions, it's incredibly hard to be taken seriously when your symptoms don't fit neatly into that system. What's frustrating is that people who can feel the pain early on often have a chance to prevent further damage. I couldn't and doctors couldn't even help me identify that I might have health issues.
I worry a lot about aging, and I'm also afraid of things like tumors or cancers that I might not feel until it's too late. As an example, I can't feel cavities forming and I didn't even notice my wisdom teeth piercing through my gums when I was a teen.
A rheumatologist explained to me that in people with chronic pain from things like arthritis, the brain's pain perception can become permanently altered to register pain that no longer "exists". She explained that the brain itself is really the source of the sensation of pain, and you don't necessarily need a "real" source producing a signal. So one should at least not ignore pain if one can avoid it.
Sure, it just feels like an incomplete justification to completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used. Also, that was just the hypothesized mechanism at play, it may not have been what was actually happening, which is the other "ugh" part to this.
That said, the article may not be fairly representing what happened in the first place, so...
>Sure, it just feels like an incomplete justification to completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used.
Clicking "FDA" in the bit you quoted above takes you to a different page wherein the FDA laments the lack of data around the drug (eg, the "hypothesized mechanism"). It also suggests that the companies intend to work with the FDA more on this.
Was the vote against approval a move to "completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used", or was it a desire to better understand it before saying "okay"?
> Was the vote against approval a move to "completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used", or was it a desire to better understand it before saying "okay"?
Why do you present this as an either/or?
> Clicking "FDA" in the bit you quoted above takes you to a different page
Indeed, where I found that...
> That said, the article may not be fairly representing what happened in the first place, so...
...this is exactly what happened, i.e. I was successfully misled even before reaching your false dichotomy. Yay.
I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to answer your first question before coming to the conclusion that I was using a false dichotomy.
I didn't intend to present it as an "either/or", though I can see how it can be read that way. I simply read you saying that they "completely prevent[ed]" something from coming to market when, perhaps, they're not "completely" doing anything and are open to doing it provided that they know more about it. That the "incomplete justification" you lamented may also have been how the FDA felt about the data provided to them.
It could also be for other reasons, absolutely! This is just one possibility that seems very obvious to me. There's no either/or from my end.
> I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to answer your first question before coming to the conclusion that I was using a false dichotomy.
If I didn't already conclude that you presented a false dichotomy, why would I have inquired about why you did so? It's also not set in stone; from your reply I can just change my mind afterwards. But why do it in two rounds when I can do it in one?
I understand if I came across as hostile though, I admit it was sadly reflexive, and I apologize.
> perhaps, they're not "completely" doing anything and are open to doing it provided that they know more about it.
That's not a nuance I intended to disregard. Yes, I understand they can revisit the drug's approval later, didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
Especially when it's sometimes hard to read tone, even moreso from a stranger whose communication style we're unfamiliar with. Even harder still, comments online generally don't lend themselves well to nuance and assumptions can easily be made, such as my leaning too heavily on your use of the word "completely"! Should we hug it out?
If you remove the flag (pain), harm will continue.