The United States positions itself as the leader in medicine, the best in the world at advancing science and saving lives. Ed Clay's experience running a cancer research clinic tells a different story.

Getting to a Phase 1 safety trial with the FDA in the United States takes 5 to 7 years and costs an average of $30 to $50 million. Clay's clinic can do the equivalent work in as little as 6 months for under $1 million.

Clay frames this as an ethical failure, not just a bureaucratic one. The clinical trial model, as it currently exists, asks terminal patients to wait 10 to 15 years for treatments that might help them, when many of those patients don't have 10 to 15 months.

Modern healthcare, in his view, treats patients as numbers rather than individuals, and the system is built around its own timeline rather than theirs.

The regulatory barriers that push this research to Mexico are not protecting patients. They are keeping treatments away from them.

@delbigtree