Yeah I dream of an alternate history where the US looked at the Cuban revolution as a just act of self defense and democracy, and we supported our neighbors despite our economic differences.

Yeah, the embargo has kind of backfired in that way, by giving us an example of a self sufficient socialist state that can survive (and in some cases thrive) despite being completely cut off from the US, and much of the West, for 60+ years

It's also a tasty cocktail

Let's pretend that the title is an irony on that fact.

From the Wikipedia page, it seems like a fairly normal cancer vaccine. The thing limiting these in North America and Europe is that you can't legally do drug trials on people until you've tried all the approved medicines for that condition first, as trial drugs might do nothing and might cause side effects, and the placebo control group would literally not be getting any treatment. By the time cancer patients have tried all the existing treatments, they're usually either already dead, or already cancer-free, so the only trial participants left are already nearly dead, and likely to keel over immediately no matter how good the trial drug. That means things that drug companies have known will work for over a decade still aren't available, and once they are, they'll need to be unreasonably expensive just to break even.

Either this one has finally got over these kinds of hurdle after years of effort, or Cuba's been doing trials that wouldn't be legal elsewhere. Even if they have, it's not necessarily a criticism - if a trade embargo stops you accessing lots of medicines, then you need to get through fewer of them before you've tried everything available and can start trial drugs. Once it's fully approved, it won't need to be expensive, as the research costs can be offset against the cost savings from treating patients, as everything's state-funded.

In his last term Obama tried to be nicer to Cuba and made some deals with them, which included easing on the embargo and embassies.

@Grok why is that tweet AI generated? /s

I fear a significant portion of humanity will be servitors before long.

This is fucking medical science, not politics.

Everything is politics. Especially when everything you try to do is hampered by stupid and/or abusive politics, such as the embargo.

You're right that coming up with the drug is in itself commendable, but you're wrong in implying that coming up with it while under the embargo doesn't make it even MORE impressive.

The US and their horrible system have worked against science on many occasions.

The US is Sabotaging healthcare science long-term with it's bullshit. We would be better off if it turned into a new Atlantida.

The US embargo against Cuba is political as well.

The US politicians turning a blind eye on the lives destroyed by for-profit healthcare are political as well.

The US coming up with anything is not commendable because we literally always overcharge wildly for life saving treatments and let anyone who can't afford them die

It is all politics. Your fucking life is going to be even more political soon meaning miserable cause of some policies. I hate it when people are like "duh I am not into politics".

That's not really how trials for treatments like this work. The non-experimental groups would get standard of care/a comparator which would be used to determine efficacy. It would be unethical to give sugar pills to patients with advanced NSCLC.

Edit: yep https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12568215/

Ironically placebos work so well in almost all cases that placebo results actually screw the data a bit. The human fucking mind is crazy yo

The AMA has a section in their code of ethics about when and how to use a placebo in situations like this.

Placebo knee surgery literally works

It's important in case the drug that is being tested has unintended side effects, not having a control group means you have no idea if bad things are caused by the drug or by some other external factor (like medical history of the patients, environment...)

The control group probably isn't given placebo drugs, that probably wouldn't fly in most countries. Haven't looked into these specific trials and I'm not a medical professional!

I assume you mean IV.

Your body is constantly making cancerous cells. But the immune system is constantly detecting and cleaning them up.