I’m wondering because pharmaceutical ads can list some pretty major side effects, let’s say like kidney failure or “even death”. Does that mean that in the human trials a significant enough percentage of the test population died? Seems kinda messed up to pay people to test medications if they can end up getting seriously hurt..
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A big reason they always say “possible side effects” is because it is usually not possible to directly and unconditionally say that a drug is the cause of an effect. If you have a trial in which there are a thousand people participating over five years, chances are at least some of them are going to die. Some from heart attacks, some from strokes, some from car accidents. Figuring out if this drug makes one of those things more likely can take a long time.
But keep in mind that we don’t just start clinical trials with no idea what will happen: these only occur after other extensive testing, and these days most of the effects of a drug can be predicted simply by analyzing its chemical structure.
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