upvote
> nobody really understands why a medication works.

But they work hard to try to understand it because the more they do the better the results for peoplea health. Also it goes without saying that if someone didn't understand many of the things that we do understand then things would be worse for us all.

reply
Sure but in this reality, humans won't need to work hard to try to understand it for there to be better results for peoples health.
reply
I feel like we just don't understand a lot about the human body still. Only a century and a half ago we had a US president die because a doctor rummaged around and damaged internal organs (with unwashed hands, because germ theory was still not uniformly accepted) to try to find a bullet on the wrong side of his body. We've come a long way since then, but it's not like we've been doing the field of medicine rigorously for all that long. The best strategy we have seems like pretty much the same as any other scientific field; come up with ideas based on what we know, try them out, and see if they work. That doesn't necessarily give us any actual insight into why it works though.
reply
Yet it takes rigorous years long tests to understand effects of a medication.
reply
Yes, and understanding the effects of a medication is different to understanding how the medication has that effect.

The medical field as a whole isn’t generally interested in understanding how medication, only in empirical measuring and qualify the effects.

reply
> The medical field as a whole isn’t generally interested in understanding how medication, only in empirical measuring and qualify the effects.

I don't think this is quite correct. I mean many practitioners of medicine will have the attitude of ... "if it works, it works". And that's perfectly reasonable.

But if you understand the mechanism of action of a drug (or other treatment), it (often) makes it easier to improve a drug.

So ... some sectors of the "medical field" understandably care only about empirical results. But other sectors would prefer to understand what's going on.

reply
>The medical field as a whole isn’t generally interested in understanding how medication, only in empirical measuring and qualify the effects.

This is nonsense. Most, if not all professionals are interested in mechanism of action, but without Ms Frizzle, it is extremely difficult and expensive (time and money wise) to figure that out. So while the labs run the experiments with the very limited funding they have, we make do with using the second best thing we have, which are statistics.

reply
The tests are there to confirm with statistics that (1) it works and (2) side effects are not too bad or too frequent.

That doesn't mean we understand why the medication works.

reply
Yes and no: understanding means to know the relationships to the underlying system.

When you already know that system well, those effects are often just a matter of simple inference.

Just like here: most people are actually perfectly capable to foresee the detrimental effects of abandoning understanding.

Living in a fantasy world of "magic" makes you dependent upon your caretakers, who provide the ingredients.

reply
And this is exactly what Dario wants.
reply
unless its the mrna covid vaccine. which needed how many months?
reply
This is so tiring.
reply
That cant be true, theres a paper trail of sign offs of the most likely people to understand the probabilities.

Please define proof of "really understands why a medication works"

It reminds me of fynemans why do magnets work. Yeah sure does anyone really understand anything? Its metaphors all the way down

reply
We don’t really understand how NSAIDs reduce pain, as a concrete example. In contrast we have a pretty good understanding of the pharmacology of caffeine.

It’s not like magnets, some things really are gaps.

reply
Some medications are designed for one purpose, then other effects are discovered in practice. Gabapentin, for example, was designed as an anti-seizure medication structurally similar to the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA.

Now it is primarily used to treat neuropathic pain, and the mechanism for that is not well understood. The GABA receptor is not involved. This effect is just a happy accident, and nobody really understands why it works.

reply
its a good thing that our lack of understanding of medicines has never killed anybody or have had any intended consequences

oh wait

reply