Serious We are all a test subject

[Caite-chan]

This has gotten me thinking more about it because of COVID and how a lot of people don't want to get the shot for one reason or another. Not because they can't they just flat out don't want to. A lot of times they claim they don't want to be test subjects for the government or what have you. But the way I see it if you take ANY sort of medication for ANY reason you are a test subject. Granted medicine has already been long tested but no two people are exactly the same.

Unless you take absolutely no medicine at all I see us being a test subject of some sort whether we want to admit it or not.

 

[Sheep]

No medicine is completely safe, not even common ones like tylenol/advil/other painkillers. They always have side effects and there will be instances of dangerous, sometimes life-threatening, side effects, especially for medication that might interact with any conditions people may not know they have (like how birth control has caused blood clots in some women that weren't aware they had a clotting disorder). It's just the way it is.

People are definitely test subjects for medication too. Often the last step in clinical trials involve putting the product on shelves and monitoring it for safety, which can take years. The COVID vaccine was a special case and had emergency authorization, so of course even now we are technically 'testing' it as we get it. Here's a normal clinical trial pathway I grabbed off of NCIRS:

Obviously not possible to have achieved this with the COVID vaccines due to the urgency. :(

 

[Megan]

The weirdest thing is that these people refuse to take these medications but at the same time don't listen when you tell them that the food they eat is pumped full of antibiotics and whatnot. They just listen to things they find convenient. <_<

 

[Nah]

Something I'll just mention regarding covid-19 vaccines: "Coronavirus" isn't a singular virus, it's a family of viruses, of which covid-19 is a part of. Research and testing of vaccines is indeed a years or even decades long process, and it wasn't really any different with covid-19. Medical research is being done all the time, not just when there's active problems. Vaccine research for coronaviruses had been going for years prior to the pandemic, especially after the SARS outbreak(s) in the early 2000's. So in the case of covid-19, at lot of the work was already done and they just needed to adapt it for this specific coronavirus. Still probably went faster than normal given we're talking about one of the biggest health emergencies of the past few decades, but it's not like they literally compressed a 10 year long process into a single year.

https://covid19.nih.gov/news-and-stories/vaccine-development

 

[Corrin]

Nah is right.
SARS is a coronavirus. They have similar symptoms, however SARS was in 2003 and there was much less travel and such then, it was contained.

However, this thread is a good point! Anyone who's ever been sick and to the doctor and the doctor is like "Let's try you on this anti biotic." they're sort of testing it's effectiveness on you specifically.
Doctors hate me because I'm allergic to Amoxil, lmao (joking, they're just like "well this is hard")

 

[Duck]

Not even just with medicine, but this applies to any large scale decision in general.

When there's a new economic plan, your country is a test subject to some economist.
When a company changes business plans, you're either a test subject as a worker or as a consumer (the testing being whether change X will bring more profit).
When you have kids, they're test subjects to certain parenting styles and decisions (I think that if I do X, my kid will be Y)

You just don't think at it this way because it's removed from the science setting people normally think of when someone says "test subject".

Anything that isn't 100% certain is open to whims of chance and is therefore a test. The problem should never be "I'm a test subject and that's not OK".

"The relevant statistics aren't safe enough" is a valid answer*, but of course, that would require numeracy and statistical literacy and a staggeringly amount of people usually think math is the devil and it isn't in the best interest of the ruling class to change that, so it remains unchanged.

* Not for the COVID vaccine in particular, since that isn't the case as far as I'm aware, but in general you know.

 

[Fairy]

The weirdest thing is that these people refuse to take these medications but at the same time don't listen when you tell them that the food they eat is pumped full of antibiotics and whatnot. They just listen to things they find convenient. <_<

Yeah, and then they get their animals vaccinated too.

 

[Corrin]

Yeah, and then they get their animals vaccinated too.

Anything but their children.

Sadly.