13.7: Cosmos And Culture Random Clinical Trials Are Not The Only
Answer To Identifying Effective Therapies Medicine in the United
States is, in part, safeguarded by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA). The FDA serves admirably as a protection
against charlatans and ineffective treatments through the use of
clinical trials that filter out dangerous drugs and identify
safe, effective therapies. The FDA's work has a direct impact on
health insurance coverages, including Medicare. The efficacy of
its screening procedures are of intense importance. These
procedures largely rest on double-blind, random clinical trials
(RCT) that can yield statistically powerful evidence about the
efficacy and safety of a drug. In a forthcoming post I hope to
discuss recent work with colleagues that starts to examine where
random clinical trials fail, and what to do when that happens.
This is a subject I touched on in my last post, "Should The FDA
Rethink How It Runs Clinical Trials?". Random clinical trials
typically vary a sing