In fact anything that pharma companies say about a drug must be information from a clinical trial. One of those little surprising but obvious in retrospect fact

In fact anything that pharma companies say about a drug must be information from a clinical trial. One of those little surprising but obvious in retrospect facts. Clinical trials must be designed not just to 1) find out whether the drug works, 2) find out whether it’s safe, 3) ideally avoid information that it’s not safe, but also 4) generate the numbers they can put on brochures to compare it against alternatives. Then all of those are balanced against the immense cost (to pharma) and complexity (to pharma, CROs, trial sites, and trial participants). It’s a ludicrously complex business process.