"Dr. Hillman has been working on this therapy for 25 years and first applied to the F.D.A. for permission to begin a clinical trial in 1998. The agency, the company said, has demanded change upon change to make sure the modified bacteria would not run amok, cause undesirable changes in the mouth, or revert to a cavity-producing form. To win approval, Oragenics has agreed that the 15 volunteers in the first trial will not even have teeth -- they will have dentures."
This differs from the version I heard from Aaron in that Aaron said 100 people and NYT says 15 people, but NYT says the FDA demanded "change after change", so the 100 might be either an earlier or a later version of this.
Hopefully this changes your opinion of whether or not this is a scam, and of how much you understand about the FDA approval process.
I looked into this and it isn't true - countries which switch to opt-out don't get significantly more than we do. I agree this is surprising. The best explanation I was able to find was that, of the few people who get in accidents/comas where their organs are useful, most have already opted it, and there's a lot of negotiation with the family around exactly what that means such that an opt-in/opt-out box doesn't make a big deal. See eg https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/presumed... .
I'm the author of the article. This was added by Substack without my knowledge (it doesn't show up to me since I'm already subscribed) and I think I've disabled it now. Please check to confirm that it is disabled.
If you look at the link in the piece, you'll notice it isn't an affiliate link. If it were an affiliate link, it would have a linkcode section, or more likely just use the amzn.to link shortener that Amazon automatically applies to all its affiliate links unless you stop it.
(source: I am the OP, I do have an Amazon affiliate link, and I chose not to use it in the article to avoid concerns like this one)
"If that's the case though, I wonder why my friends and family back in the states keep complaining to me about the empty shelves, Amazon Prime delays, etc. Shouldn't fixing the symptoms of today's strained supply chain have been an easy task compared to climate change? "
If we still have empty shelves in a year, I'll admit you're right about this!
I think it's telling that the main thing you can complain about is a pretty temporary disequilibrium that's only been true for a month or two and isn't really seriously threatening most people's quality of life.
I'm the author. Guilty as charged of not being an engineer. But did you see the paper I cited for this, https://sci-hub.st/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... ? I also think the fact that the price has come down by several times already and is still nowhere near an economy of scale suggests it can do so more in the future. I didn't mean Moore's Law as a literal "it will always go down by exactly the same amount every year"
"Dr. Hillman has been working on this therapy for 25 years and first applied to the F.D.A. for permission to begin a clinical trial in 1998. The agency, the company said, has demanded change upon change to make sure the modified bacteria would not run amok, cause undesirable changes in the mouth, or revert to a cavity-producing form. To win approval, Oragenics has agreed that the 15 volunteers in the first trial will not even have teeth -- they will have dentures."
This differs from the version I heard from Aaron in that Aaron said 100 people and NYT says 15 people, but NYT says the FDA demanded "change after change", so the 100 might be either an earlier or a later version of this.
Hopefully this changes your opinion of whether or not this is a scam, and of how much you understand about the FDA approval process.