That's an utterly ridiculous stipulation.
Nah, I don't think so. I was involved in the Phase-I as a "travel patient", I was the only person who did this, and I think it caused them to sort of evaluate that process.
There are two other good reasons that they have this policy:
* they have become so inundated with queries as a result of published research and medical papers, that they now have a
large pool of interested local potential test subjects
* someone who is so desperate that they are willing to literally uproot their life and actually
move, is not going to be a good test subject, because when you get yourself that personally invested in the research, you desperately want it to work. I had
some amount of grappling with this, "I am super personally invested in this because I've spent thousands on travel", but the money wasn't much of a worry to me
at that time, and I wasn't living there. I also don't think that I was desperate enough at that time to actually move to Ann Arbor full time, and if I had been... I would have been an even worse test subject.
Their concern right now is data aggregation sufficient to clear FDA hurdles for marketing. Trying to accommodate severely anxious or highly distressed patients who are willing to relocate just for the potential to
maybe get relief
for a few weeks only.... that's just peripheral distraction to the base goal of "prove this works ASAP, sell it so we can get these into peoples' hands, provide long term relief, and be profitable".
Frankly, my own experience as their only travel patient, might have something to do with why that exclusion exists; I think we both learned some things from that process. As far as I know I was either the literal best or one of the best responders to the treatment; the degree to which I was personally and financially invested in it, casts a small shadow on that.
Oddly this did not stop them from contacting me prior to the start of the Phase-II to ask if I wanted in.
wth is wrong with their IRB
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