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As a patient of any chronic ailment you need to know that every medicine that reaches you comes through a strenuous process that begins in a lab where a molecule is "designed" to unlock a physiological mechanism in our body that has gone awry. A drug then enters animal studies or sometimes "in vitro" studies where the effect & side effects of the drug is seen in animals and in cultured human cells. Once through, comes a pilot study where the drug is assessed in a small group of healthy volunteer &/or selected patients. Multi centric trial involving several patients from multiple centres spread across countries or even continents comes next. This eliminates the bias the original inventor may have.
Repeatability of an observed effect or side effect is also determined through these trials. A safe dose that would ensure the desired action without any side effect is also worked out.
This whole procedures aleady consumes several yearsbefore the safety profile is worked out and many a times potentially promising therapies disappear before they reach you!
As a person belonging to the scientific community, I find it painful to hear that "modern drugs are bad since they have side effects!".
Medicine would not have advanced thus far if a rationalist approach had not been taken up since the begining. In contrast, all kind of alternative drugs remain mystic and occult. The knowledge pertaining to these also known to "a chosen few", some of them claiming to be "practicing" over generations! A gullible patient religiously takes them for months and years and the disease is either cured on its own (some diseases affect only certian age groups or are influenced by certian external conditions that may improve or disappear), or the patient perishes. In either case, it's advantage, "occult thearpist!".
What do you take for your ailment?
Something prescribed by a qualified doctor or a quack?
Beware.
To be continued.....
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