Editing 2530: Clinical Trials
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | + | {{incomplete|Created by MEDICAL PROCEDURE STEP DERF - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | |
− | The purpose of clinical trials in medicine is to make sure that a new medicine works and doesn't have serious side-effects. One example of the dangers of failing to make sure that it doesn't have serious side effects is {{w|thalidomide}}, which caused a lot of birth defects. In a clinical trial, the effect of a treatment is compared to the effect of a placebo, or an existing treatment, to make sure it actually has a beneficial effect. (Earlier trials establish that it is even a viable candidate for testing and establishing possible dosages/regimens that can then be carried forward to a treatment (Phase III) trial.) | + | The purpose of clinical trials in medicine is to make sure that a new medicine works and doesn't have serious side-effects. One example of the dangers of failing to make sure that it doesn't have serious side effects is {{w|thalidomide}}, which caused a lot of birth defects. In a clinical trial, the effect of a treatment is compared to the effect of a placebo, or an existing treatment, to make sure it has actually has a beneficial effect. (Earlier trials establish that it is even a viable candidate for testing and establishing possible dosages/regimens that can then be carried forward to a treatment (Phase III) trial.) |
− | Before the invention of clinical trials, people generally didn't know, or at least had no way of confirming, whether medicines actually worked. Although | + | Before the invention of clinical trials, people generally didn't know, or at least had no way of confirming, whether medicines actually worked. Although some herbs and medicines were stumbled upon, most medicine was no better than a placebo. A lot of medical treatments such as {{w|trepanation}} and {{w|bloodletting}} not only had no benefit, but were very likely to be harmful. Those that did work at all were mostly just those few possible treatments that had been tried (for {{w|doctrine of names|whatever reason}}) and had just happened to be useful, but many others will have had neutral or even adverse effects, but had still managed to not be so entirely deadly such that recoveries regardless of (or despite!) such treatments were taken as common-knowledge 'proof' of their efficacy. |
− | + | Some may, like some of today's treatments, have been gradually discovered to help a particular condition only by noticing beneficial side-effects when imbibed for sustenance or for unrelated medical 'guesses'. However, they also remained without the full scientific vigour so long as it remained a 'traditional remedy' with at best an oral tradition across many disparate practitioners, and no consistent effort to formalise or test the falsifiability of any findings. | |
− | At the time that this comic was published, the world was in the middle of the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, which made the existence of clinical trials more relevant to the public, who waited eagerly for what sounded like good ideas to get through clinical trials and available to the general | + | At the time that this comic was published, the world was in the middle of the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, which made the existence of clinical trials more relevant to the public, who waited eagerly for what sounded like good ideas to get through clinical trials and available to the general public…or fail clinical trials and not do that. |
− | + | The title text is a nice bit of Monroean humor — because we didn't have clinical trials as part of the "standard of care" before their adoption, we didn't need to do testing before we started using them. If we had had them as the standard of care, then we would have had to perform tests before we switched over (in concept; in practice of course that kind of political change is still not tested) and it would have taken longer. | |
− | + | ==Transcript== | |
+ | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
− | |||
:1. Come up with new idea | :1. Come up with new idea | ||
:2. Convince people it's good | :2. Convince people it's good | ||
− | :[Scrawled in red as an afterthought, an arrow | + | :[Scrawled in red handwriting, as an afterthought, an arrow indicating it is between item 2 and the original item 3] |
:3. Check whether it works | :3. Check whether it works | ||
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:[Caption below the panel] | :[Caption below the panel] | ||
− | :The invention of clinical trials | + | :The invention of clinical trials. |
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
[[Category: Science]] | [[Category: Science]] |