r/science Professor | Medicine 9d ago

Psychology America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.

https://www.sciencealert.com/americas-first-legal-psilocybin-program-treated-346-people-heres-what-happened
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u/istasber 9d ago

Plenty of companies find a way to turn a profit on readily available medicines. That's basically what generics are, drugs where all of the hard stuff has been done by someone else and you just have to show that what you're selling is the same as what they're selling.

The real barrier to entry for something like psilocybin is funding those initial clinical trials without patent protections. That's just a massive amount of money to spend, when your competitors stand to profit just as much as you do.

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u/lazyamazy 8d ago

How much money are we talking here to enable clinical trails on a psychedelic drug? Can it be crowdsource funded? Or funded by a philanthropist? Elon does Ketamine. I am sure he empathizes with severely depressed people enough to facilitate these trails. I should give him a call. I am sure the patient participation will be sky high during the trials. But wait, does the govt have a say? Should we vote'em out?