How do we know that eating 42 lemons mixed with a ground up pine cone from Alaska isn’t the cure for a sickness or disease? Who decides XYZ will be combined with ABC to see if it will be a cure and how is that decided upon rather than some other combination of the countless options of ingredients?
In: Chemistry
We know that certain things contain chemical XYZ, and those generally have properties that we’re aware of after testing and research. We know that some things do go together and some things dont because they might counteract one another. Again, as a result of lots of research.
Finally, the contents of medicine depends on the medicine you want, how big the dosage of the active drug needs to be, how long it needs to be in the body, where should the medicine work most effectively, etc. This again is finalised after lots of failures and tests until they get it right.
We tried leamons and Alaskan pine cones as part of a trial but it did not seam to have any effect compared to a control group that only got leamons and pine cones from Colerado. Modern drug manufacturing have come a far way. We are able to very accuratly analyze different organic chemicals to find its composition and structure. We are also able to engineer these chemicals very accuratly by predicting what different chemical processes does. It have come to the point where you can order a specific organic chemical that have never been synthesized before and be guaranteed that you get that exact chemical.
So finding a new drug involves testing lots of different chemicals. You often test a group of similar chemicals that you know from previous experiments have something to do with the processes involved is the disease. There is two things you need to find out. Firstly if the specific chemical will have a positive effect on someone suffering from the disease and secondly if there is any side effects. The first tests will be conducted on animals so as to not cause harm to any humans. Even if you can not get animals with the disease you try to cure you could at least get a sense of the side effects of the propposed medicine at different levels. So from all the compounds you start out with and all the different possible concentrations you will be able to weed out a lot of them through animal testing. Then you can go on to human trials. Drug companies will very often reach out to doctors treating patients of diseases they are researching to find candidates for these experiments. However as with animal testing even healthy humans can provide valuable insigts into the effects of the drug. You start off with small scale experiments just to see if there is any major issues with the drugs and to better understand what concentrations might have an effect. All experiments are conducted double blind which means that the people preparing the drugs and decides which subject gets which experimental drug, known good drug or the placebo does not tell those who administer the drugs and records the results. It is only after the result is done and a conclusion is reached that they reveal which drug was which. This is done so that there is no way for the researchers to even subconciously favor one drug over the others.
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