Schalt mal einen Gang runter in deiner Wortwahl, wäre vielleicht gut.
(Maybe you should downshift gear in your choice of words, thank you.)
He’s aggressive and lacks social skills. Maybe it’s because of PFS and not really his fault. Hopefully he’ll come to his senses now that he’s been advised politely.
Anyway.
Neural changes theory makes sense to me, since we know that fin passes the blood-brain barrier. I still have left low abdomen and testicle pain after 8 years, it’s a “nerve pinch” type of pain that comes and goes. It greatly intensifies when I attempt to have sex, which probably indicate a bad nerve impulse during arousal.
Haha. Dont worry about my social skills. I dont have any problem with them in real life. I will admit that I went overboard with the insults yesterday.
I think that my main point (if you eliminate all the insults) still stands: Why discourage actual work on our condition, by falsely claiming that an explanation of PFS within our lifetime is highly unlikely. That seems a) highly speculative and biased towards the worst possible outcome b) counterproductive in a strategic sense (as it discourages further studies and productive work). I think you could also reassess your attitude. If scientific work is the only route that might solve this for everyone, why take every possibility you get to undermine such work? Even though its hard, we need to be patient and encourage more scientific work on our problem. We cant expect a breakthrough with every study and it might take a lot of trial and error until we circle in on the problem.
Anyway, I think we have both said what we think. Lets burry the hatched and focus on the future. I hope you can allow yourself to be a bit more optimistic.
I’m sceptical about studies because, apart from taking too damn long, we don’t know if they are being manipulated by big pharma or not. My father was a pharmacist, and there are many doctors and pharmacists in my family, so I’m not a stranger to these things. Yesterday I was talking to my nephew who’s a doctor. I was telling him about this study, I told him that they couldn’t find anything wrong with androgen receptors, so it could be neural or epigenetic, and he said “or maybe the results were rigged”. I have a hard time putting my trust in it because studies saying that this poison is safe is what got us in this situation in the first place.
If you drank coca cola and got poisoned, wouldn’t you think twice before trusting pepsi? Corporate capitalism has no concept of right and wrong, they just want to make as much money as possible, in any way possible.
I greatly appreciate people donating money to the foundation and hope that with their efforts a cure would be discovered so we can all get on with our lives. I say what I say not to discourage people, but so that we see both sides of the coin.
That being said, I agree on burying the hatchet and focusing on the future. I’ve posted about this on another thread, I’m thinking of trying electroconvulsive shock treatment to see if “shaking the brain” would have any positive effect. I’ll post about my experience if I actually decide to go through with it.
Ok. I guess we have to agree to disagree.
If you are talking about the combinaton of private industry and the state, i.e. fascism, I agree. That however has nothing to do with free market capitalism. Otherwise that is just nonsense: You earn money by providing a valuable good and service to your customer. In our case, it went wrong, but that shouldnt cloud our judgement when assessing entrepreneurship in general.
I think capitalism is the only system that leads to human flourishing. The economic stagnation we see in europe and the united states is because of an out of control government, that has effectively outlawed technological progress through absurd regulation. We have made significant progress in the world of bits (that arent regulated), but no progress in the world of atoms (that are heavily regulated), like Peter Thiel likes to say. Our society has experienced stagnation in the sectors transportation (concorde was decommissioned in 2003, no increase in travelling speeds since the 1960s), energy (we have seen no vast improvement in engergy costs), medicine (FDA massively increases the costs of developing new drugs while giving patients a false sense of security) and education. As a society we have gotten much more risk averse, envious and technophobic. High taxes arent helping the situation either. As a percentage of our economy, governments are bigger than ever before (over 50%).
At the same time we have artificially low interest rates and phony money, shoved down our throats by central banks. Low interest rates kill growth, by discouraging savings and thus investment in new capital equipment. The ECB has bought up corporate bonds, resulting in negative yields, which has led to corporations earning money by going into debt. Why invest in new technologies, when you can earn money by borrowing X and paying back less than X? This monetary policy is also responsible for the fake boom and bust cycle we are experiencing.
So I believe your analysis on capitalism being the fault for the worlds problems is false.
At the same time I believe your theory that the studies are manipulated is highly unlikely and (excuse me for saying this) paranoid. And again I come back to the same idea: If you only have one realistic route (when homebrew and time has failed in your and many other cases), what other choice do you have, than to support it?
Even if you are against capitalism, the foundation is not for profit.
Lets leave it at that. Good Luck.
press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jc.2016-2726
Conclusions:
[b]We found no evidence of androgen deficiency, decreased peripheral androgen action, or persistent peripheral inhibition of SRD5A in men with persistent sexual symptoms after finasteride use. Symptomatic finasteride-users revealed depressed mood and fMRI findings consistent with those observed in depression.
- See more at: press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1 … RalbB.dpuf[/b]
So what we feel is in our heads?
No. They didnt say that. They were open to the possibility that we have experienced epigentic/ gene expression changes in places not covered by this study. They just stated what causes they exclude, based on this study.
“Although we did not find evidence of sequence variation in AR, SRD5A1, or SRD5A2 genes, or of significant alterations in expression of AR-dependent genes
in the skin, we cannot exclude the possibility of variations in other genes or in the gene expression levels in other tissues or specific brain regions involved in regulation of mood and sexual function. It is also possible that finasteride may exert epigenetic effects which may account for persistent symptoms.”
They exlude the following as well:
“The clinical implications of these findings are that symptomatic finasteride users are unlikely to benefit from treatment with testosterone, DHT, or any other androgen because these patients do not have evidence of androgen deficiency, persistent SRD5A inhibition or androgen insensitivity”
What I come away with, is that they have excluded a couple of things while still being open to other explanations (epigentic changes/ changes in gene expression/ variations in other genes). Lets see what the other studies say.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in.
I just did a quick google search on the researchers who did the study it appears that at least 3 of them have financial links to Merck.
Grace Huang.
linkedin.com/in/grace-huang-7b12784
Hong Pan
linkedin.com/in/hong-pan-36467610
Shalender Bhasin
projects.propublica.org/d4d-arch … s/12531866
It would be worth investigating further to see which of the researchers may have a conflict of interest.
1 Like
Dr. Khera leading Baylor study has accepted plenty of money from Merck too…
1 Like
big pharma shills
Disclosure Summary: Dr. Basaria has received grant support
from Abbott Pharmaceuticals for investigator-initiated studies
unrelated to this study and has previously consulted for Eli Lilly,
Inc. Dr. Bhasin has received research grant support from Abbvie
Pharmaceuticals, Transition Therapeutics, Takeda Pharmaceuticals,
and Eli Lilly, Inc. for investigator-initiated research unrelated
to this study. Dr. Bhasin has served as a consultant to
AbbVie, Regeneron, Novartis, and Eli Lilly & Co. SB has a financial
interest in Function Promoting Therapies, LLC, a company
aiming to develop innovative solutions that enhance precision
and accuracy in clinical decision making and facilitate
personalized therapeutic choices in reproductive health. SB’s interests
were reviewed and are managed by Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and Partners HealthCare in accordance with their
conflict of interest policies. Other authors have reported no
conflicts.
Lol guys.
That scientists working in the medical field also have lots of connections to pharmacutical companies regarding development of drugs is normal! Especially competent scientists will be attractive employees for said companies.
In what kind of fairy tale land do you guys live? Do you really believe that competent scientists will have no connection to “big pharma” over their entire careers, when big pharma develop drugs relevant for their field of study? I would challenge you to find a competent well known scientist, who has no connection to big pharma over their entire career.
Either bring some concrete evidence how this study is fake or not. It is always very easy to rip the work of the foundation or to rip scientists if they havent found an explanation yet. Its also very easy to be cynical and copy paste employment histories of some of the scientists and develop a conspiracy theory. Its MUCH HARDER to actually be productive and find solutions for our problem. Always remember that.
Just my honest opinion.
It doesn’t look good when you have a Doctor leading a PFS study who has received 50k from Merck.
Even Dr. Michael Irwig says in this interview that they should hire “independent researchers who have not received money from pharmaceutical companies because there is a potential conflict of interest”.
skip to (17:43)
Look: I think the foundation has taken all the facts into consideration and trust the people you are trying to slander. I will take their judgement over yours.
I’m not “slandering” anyone I’m just pointing out how it looks from the outside.
Ok. I still think its naive to think that researchers wont have connectionts to big pharma. In this case, he was paid from Merck years ago, however to suggest that thus this study is fake, despite the PFS foundation looking over it, is a bit of a stretch.
We have to extend a bit of trust to the foundation. Otherwise this cant work. If you have a workable alternative to make progress regarding PFS, I would love to hear it.
Even Dr. Michael Irwig says in this interview that they should hire “independent researchers who have not received money from pharmaceutical companies because there is a potential conflict of interest”.
I can’t believe we have been sat here since 2015 waiting for these studies only to find that they have been conducted by Big Pharma Doctors. Dr Irwig saw this coming. I think the Harvard study is already a massive blow to those invovled with the Foundation.
“Coupled with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital study, the Baylor research promises to pave the way for PFS therapies by uncovering the root causes of this condition that is likely affecting thousands of men worldwide,” said PFS Foundation CEO Dr. John Santmann.
We’re a bunch of random men vs. a billion dollar multi-national corporation. If studies had been done by independent researchers, they could have been bought out too. Lets wait for the result of the Baylor study before we jump to conclusions.
On the one hand you guys say that finding an explanation within our lifetime is highly unlikely.
On the other hand you scream pharma- study when they dont find the cause in the first study.
I dont think its likely that these scientists purposefully screwed up this study, to help out Merck. They did their tests and found no abnormalities in many areas (except for the brain scan stuff). They were open to other explanations, like epigentic changes.
We have to continue looking, and at the same time trust that the foundation has vetted the docs conducting the study. Like vanquish says: That scientists get bough off behind closed doors, to ruin the study, is always a (remote) possibility. That these scientists have openly shared the payments they received in the last decade, is a good sign, not a bad one. At least not necessarily.
I doubt Merck has paid off the researchers but on the other hand I don’t see them doing anything that will harm Merck or another Corporation. So far the Harvard study has helped Merck out and I’m sure the other study will follow suit. These researchers are not going to upset the Corporations and risk damaging their careers for the Foundation or us for that matter. There are ways to do things discretely without being obvious, I believe Harvard have done this.
In that case the foundation should be shut down. No point in trying to research anything, that goes against any drug developed by any major company, as no scientists will be willing to ruin his career in the industry.
If thats true, lets close down the foundation immediately and accept our fate.
Or maybe you are jumping to conclusions, based on no real evidence. Obviously PFS isnt a easy nut to crack, so it shouldnt come as a huge surprise, that the first study didnt strike gold. You cant expect them to report stuff they didnt find. If its true that their tests didnt reveal abnormalities in the places they were looking, they have to publish that. Even if you dont like that. Its always easy to develop pseudo intellectual conspiracy theories. Much harder to find an actual solution.