Patient: I have developed a horrible illness. The symptoms are terrible.
Science: here is a treatment to help reduce the symptoms while we research for a cause and/or cure and/or better treatment options.
General Attitude: this treatment isn't good enough. I want it to be more effective. I want it to cure this illness. I don't want to risk getting any side effects.
Science: we do not know the cause and have no known cure yet.
General Attitude: figure it out.
Science: we need money for research.
General Attitude: why donate to research for a disease of which we do not yet know the cause?
Patient: here, let me donate what I can to help fund research.
Science: great! Now we need to test and record progress.
General Attitude: I do not want to be a guinea pig! I only want to take something when we know it works.
Science: okay, we will test our progress on other living organisms to get a better idea of how it will work on human cells.
General Attitude: animal testing is bad. There is no reason to subject animals to such torture.
Science: we need volunteers to try to medications then.
Patient: I will volunteer to be a test subject for this medication.
General Attitude: I will volunteer only if I know I will not be receiving a placebo.
Science: okay. Let's do this research as a first step then conduct a double-blind study at a later date.
Science: we found a treatment that has had successful results.
General Attitude: I don't believe you because it was not a double-blind experiment.
Science: we have discovered a cause for this disease. We can begin to research prevention.
(Follow similar steps as above).
Science: we have developed a medication or a vaccine that can help prevent this disease. We now need to research its efficacy.
Patient: I guess I will volunteer to be a tesr subject.
General Attitude: that sounds dangerous. I only want it if it is 100% effective and has 0% chance of any adverse effects... I will not be a guinea pig. Research was not done on healthy individuals. How do we know it is safe for the general population?
Science: should we test on animals instead?
General Attitude: no.
Science: we have found a potential cure for this disease!!
General Attitude: I will only try this treatment when I know it will work.
Patient: please let me try this!! I volunteer!
Science: it works!! We found a cure that has a high success rate!!
General Attitude: why did it take so long to find a cure? Sounds sketchy - I think Big Pharma is hiding the cure to several diseases because there is no money in finding a cure. They are keeping us sick to make money off of us.
Science: it takes time and money for research.
General Attitude: we should be focused on prevention, not treatments or cures after developing illness. Plus, we don't have any evidence yet on what the long-term effects might be from thr use of these treatments.
Science: we have fairly effective preventative measures already, in the form of food, medications, vaccines, and healthy lifestyles.
General Attitude: well I am not ill yet, so obviously whatever I am doing is working. I have never gotten a specific vaccine and I have never developed that illness. I don't want to put poison in my body 'just in case' I come into contact or develop a disease.
Science: which is why we are researching or have researched and found treatments and/or a cure!
General attitude: you should focus on preventing illness, not just treating it.
NEW PATIENT: I have just been diagnosed with a terrible illness with terrible symptoms! Why are there so few options to help relieve my symptoms? Why have we not found a cure? Must be a conspiracy! I want relief NOW! I demand to try the newest and best medications there are available! Do something! I should not have to suffer.
This is a very rough idea of some of the problems we face.
We need several things to find treatments, cures, and preventative measures. We need research grants and money for research, we need to know the symptoms of the disease, we need to figure out how to relieve symptoms, we need to try and find a cause of a disease in order to have any hopes of curing it, we need living beings to test products in their final stages, and we need multiple reliable studies to prove efficacy. This means we need to test on animals or willing human subjects.... but if people are unwilling to be test subjects and are also fighting for reduced animal testing, how do we figure out if a medication works?? If people want a guarantee of efficacy and are unwilling to try anything otherwise, how do we figure out how to better improve treatments? How do we discover potentially new treatments?
We all want prevention of disease but don't trust any preventative measures. We want more treatment options but don't want scientists to focus on simple symptom-relief. We want to find cures but will not trust any cure until it is proven to be effective. And we don't want to be the unlucky saps to have to go through all of the testing.
We all have to do our part... and the progression of scientific discoveries relies on a little bit of faith. We cannot get everything right the first time... and even when true discoveries are made, there is so much misinformation out there that we are automatically skeptical.
So what's the solution??
I don't know either...