5 ms·
Simple answer is probably not; even a lowering of standards you still need to know if it works - so still doing studies. You'd also then get more drugs like Lil
by boyband6666 7y ago
Simple answer is probably not; even a lowering of standards you still need to know if it works - so still doing studies. You'd also then get more drugs like Lily's recently that in post-marketing turns out not to work, but ate of half a billion in sales, and a lot of patients who got not benefit.
There is no simple easy answer, it's a massively hard problem. The regulators have to balance benefit and risk, and for the most part do a hugely impressive job where they already have to add in judgement.
- gdy 7y ago"you still need to know if it works" No, you do not. Just look at the market of dietary supplements.
- boyband6666 7y agoThat's actually a very interesting one, and has been written about at length by a number of medical stats people. Hopefully I do them justice to their arguments by saying that the benefits from supplements (if any) are tiny - as in a hazard ratio of death is pretty much 1 unless you are actually deficient. Equally however the potential downside of them is pretty much zero - expensive wee is what they can mostly be summarised as. Whilst they may be money wasted, the're mostly benign, save the odd tragic case. If supplements had the side effects of chemotherapies however, they'd be banned straight away - without evidence of benefit, the risks would be too high. For a more authoratative take, one of my heroes: http://www.dcscience.net/2013/11/18/we-know-little-about-the-effect-of-diet-on-health-thats-why-so-much-is-written-about-it/ http://www.dcscience.net/2013/11/18/we-know-little-about-the...
- gdy 7y agoPotential downside is pretty high if you consider that some people tend to take supplements and other sorts of snake oil instead of working medicine.