Comment by dwa3592

I think people are missing the point that terrence is trying to make, especially on the cancer drug.

For nuance lovers - here are some basics for how you get your drugs: there is an established chain of trust from the first basic science paper to the phase 3 trial and the subsequent availability of the drug to general public

- someone publishes the first paper (basic science) explaining some biological phenomenon, which leads to 10s or 100s of other papers with some tweaks in conditions,

- after the above papers the pathway of the phenomenon is understood by researchers, they try therapies at cell level to see if they can control some behavior, 10s or more papers get published,

- then someone tries this in mice and other models, 10s and more papers get published.

- then researchers at pharma companies + hospitals create this therapy for human trials - phase 1, 2, 3 etc - data collections, then FDA - then approval.

Now, the people who worked on the phase 3 trial might not know the people who wrote the first seminal paper and they often don't exist in the same decade - but it absolutely does not mean that we (humans) don't know how these drugs work - if you take 1-2 researchers from each phase and put them in a room and ask them how that particular drug works - they will quickly be able to build a consensus. that is what the chain of trust means here. now of course there can be fraud in scientific research, but that happens in every human endeavor and is a separate topic.

back to terrence - he is saying that if there is suddenly a drug that nobody knows the origin of; passed phase 3 but it's unclear who conducted the phase 3 or if the phase 3 even happened or if it's fabricated - you would not want to take the drug. usually when doctors recommend these kinds of drugs - there is already a lot of information available about where the drug came from, if there are any case studies, which doctor tried it first, which country- they often even call those other doctors and find out who was behind the first trials going back as far as the university professors.

Your MD doctor might not know the chemistry and physics behind the drug you are taking but there is deifnitly a group of people, when put together, can tell how that drug is working. My wife is a fundamental researcher - understanding physics at DNA level and my brother is a MD doctor; our conversations are super fun.

Side effects are a completely different thing - they involve the above cycle on repeat.