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Re:FDA Approving Drugs at Breakneck Speed, Raising Alarm by nvrspyx on Saturday December 07, 2019 @11:48AM (#21731178)
FDA approves drugs following Phase III

Phase I determines safety. Phase II determines efficacy. Phase III is larger scale, randomized, and blind to give the FDA more information on the range of potential adverse effects and the effectiveness of the drug. FDA is supposed to care about both. The acceptable safety of a drug is relative to the effectiveness of it (i.e. a drug may be more dangerous or have more adverse effects, but it’s deemed “worth it” due to the effectiveness of the drug while of course maintaining a minimum safety risk for all drugs). In other words, both safety and effectiveness are both supposed to be taken as equal halves of the whole by the FDA.

Re:FDA Approving Drugs at Breakneck Speed, Raising Alarm by AnthonyMouse on Saturday December 07, 2019 @12:45PM (#21731503)
But you also want to consider alternatives. If you have something which is only effective for a small percentage of people even though it's really dangerous, that may still be worth it as something to use for people for which existing treatments were ineffective and the remaining alternative is certain death. Saving 15% of those people can be better than none.