BioViva Illustrates the Tension Between Progress and Regulation

Elizabeth Parrish of BioViva, you might recall, has made every effort to publicize the follistatin and telomerase gene therapy that she underwent. This is a strategy intended to accelerate progress; I suspect she was not the first, and that others were just more circumspect. The technology exists, it is not expensive in the grand scheme of things, and at the very least hundreds of people have the laboratory access and the knowledge to carry out such an operation. BioViva's efforts, and those of other ventures such as the Odin and Ascendance Biomedical illustrate the tension between desire for progress and desire for regulation. As a general rule, the majority of people who are not suffering significantly at the present time are just fine with heavy-handed regulation that holds back progress towards cures and enhancements. The minority of people who are suffering want the option to undergo treatments that they have researched and chosen, that appear to have a good chance of working, but are not going to be approved by regulators in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately they are largely ignored by the powers that be, and vitriol is heaped upon anyone who flouts medical regulation. You can see how this plays out against a backdrop of technological progress by looking at the history of stem cell therapies. The primary goal of regulators is avoid poor publicity, and they achieve this by putting as many roadblocks as possible in the way of new medical technology. Blocking ne...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs