I can’t accept that you’re too afraid to tell a mother why her son died. I couldn’t sit quietly keeping that information to myself. As a witness to what happened, it’s your social responsibility to speak up, but you’re avoiding it. Everything you’re writing here is excuses.
I think there’s a good chance the mother would be very upset if somebody were to try and address this issue with her. She may even deny whatever is said to her as I’m sure she is in a lot of distress already. If I were in his position, I wouldn’t want to mention this highly sensitive issue to the mother. I don’t even really see how this discussion may benefit her.
When someone dies, their family want to find out what happened. If it’s something unjust or sinister, they seek justice. In the case of health or disease, they often get actively involved in raising awareness or charity fundraising. I think denying his family the truth in this instance (or any where someone knows something) is not morally correct.
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If the family were to get involved in raising awareness or raising funds I see how that could benefit you, but I think telling them what caused the tragedy with their son would be rubbing salt in their healing wounds. You don’t know anything about him other than he took Propecia and his life ended in tragedy.
So you’re prefer them to never know what killed their son? To have questions for the rest of their lives?
I can’t believe this is even up for discussion. They have the right to know.
Getting Merk involved…? Isn’t that like having a murder investigate his own crimes? How will that help? Isn’t this the problem with the system in the first place? Studies conducted by drug companies with little oversight. Good luck with that shit.
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You don’t know what circumstances led this individual to take his life. This kind of speculation harms the credibility of our community… especially when there is no room for doubt.
Many people here speculated that Robin Williams took his life because he had a prescription for Propecia at the time. Could Propecia have contributed… maybe? But it was later revealed he had an early stage form of dementia that was much more likely to have been the reason. Pointing fingers every which way will only hurt us.
If it were 100% conclusive that this man took his life because of Propecia, I’d certainly reconsider, but you really have to be sensitive about these issues especially when there is so little available information.
If your going to tell the mother about a possible PFS suicide it might be best to write her a letter.
I totally agree with you Frustrated.
I’ve never been one to beat the drum when a celebrity dies who may have taken finasteride. In the case of an individual who 1) quit the drug, 2) committed suicide afterwards, informing the relevant parties about this is the right thing to do. Raising awareness doesn’t harm our credibility, and it could save lives.
I didn’t say “raising awareness harms our credibility”. I believe it harms our credibility when PFS patients automatically assume an individual killed himself simply because he was taking or had taken Propecia.
By the way, back to the original topic. Merck will never, ever fund studies into PFS unless it so forced to, quite literally, at gunpoint. As part of some binding agreement or by the government itself. It will simply never happen, if you can’t figure this out on your own, you really don’t understand how things work. Since it would be tantamount to them admitting guilt. And the FDA and government in general value Merck’s profits far, far more than they value the lives of a few thousand men. They sacrificed many times more people’s lives in past conflicts remember that. It is almost childish to even consider this as an option. There are many people, in powerful positions, who really just don’t care about the well-being of anyone else except themselves. Not one bit, because they can’t see how screwing over your neighbour, hurts the entire neighbourhood… so to speak.
Just trying to encourage realism. It’s a horrible situation, but try to look for actual potential avenues that might benefit us.
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Maybe you are right but I prefer to try on this petition until better potential avenues come up. It’s still better than doing nothing.
There are better avenues already. But they take more effort then doing an online petition. And may require some personal sacrifice.
It wouldn’t hurt to share what you think those avenues may be 
So basically your asking for a leader, but you won’t listen to one even if they appeared.
I basically suggested it could be helpful if you shared constructive ideas. I didn’t mention or imply anything about a leader. Many people are contributing to the PFS cause already in various ways but more good ideas are always helpful. I don’t understand why you assume nobody would listen to a “leader” if one appeared.
I agree that Merck is most definitely not going to fund research into PFS but I don’t see how an online petition hurts anything. If anything, it is a little thought provoking for the general public as to why that outcome is a near impossibility.
Hi Davidoff,
I think maybe you should tell her. I know it’s really hard, but when something like this happens, a mother probably asks herself a lot of questions about what she did wrong for her son to finish his life. I know it is an extremely hard issue, but maybe knowing something about it would be better for her. But maybe I’m wrong.
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GUYS PLEASE SUBSCRIBE THIS PETITION !
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/merck-fund-studies-into/?source=search
[Size=4]6 signatures are missing![/size]
Thank you.
I see that more than 1,000 people signed the petition. Does anyone know what ended up happening with this?
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