Pilot’s first contracts cover cancer drug approval, Alzheimer’s trial goal
Kalshi, the prediction market platform, is preparing to launch a pilot program that would allow users to bet on pending decisions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and on the results of clinical trials, according to an opinion column published in The Guardian on Aug. 4. The initial contracts include one on whether an anti-cancer drug will be approved and another on whether a trial for an Alzheimer’s drug will meet its goals.
Company representatives have said the program is not about betting on whether potentially life-saving treatments succeed or fail, but about “surfacing information.” Kalshi describes the offering as a “continuously updated, public probability that reflects the weight of the evidence, rather than the preferred message of the trial sponsor.” Kalshi’s chief executive, Tarek Mansour, said in a statement: “Drug development is one of the most important and most information-constrained industries on earth […] The data that determines which drugs advance and which don’t is largely locked away from the people who need it most.”
Joshua Pederson, a professor of humanities at Boston University whose 12-year-old son is enrolled in a clinical trial for a novel cancer treatment, objected to the plans. “The possibility that somebody out there might be wagering against my son, hoping that the treatment fails so they can make money, is enraging,” Pederson wrote, asking how the offering is not another type of “death market” — like markets for war or assassination — that even Kalshi says it will not abide.
Pederson wrote that the family “got word that he had mass growing around three of his ribs” a shade under two years ago, and that his son was declared disease-free last summer. The cancer returned a couple of months ago, he wrote, and the best remaining option was a trial featuring “a novel combination of chemo and immunotherapy.” The family signed up almost immediately; early results have been mixed.
Pederson acknowledged that such markets can carry information value. When his son’s cancer returned, he wrote, doctors described several trials for which he was eligible, and choosing among them “was and continues to be a terrifying experiment for which we feel ill-prepared.” Still, he wrote, “the idea that our family would turn to a prediction market to help us make these decisions – rather than to our extremely qualified team of oncologists – is preposterous,” even setting aside the possibility that such markets are much less accurate than their chief executives would lead people to believe.
He also raised concerns about the broader effects, citing “experts’ real fears that betting on trials and approvals will hinder or harm potentially life-saving research.”