> (...) as if though drug trials aren't already expensive enough, retarding scientific progress and costing millions of lives from drugs that would have been otherwise developed.

Isn't testing a vital part of this development, and by extension a crucial part of what you call scientific progress? The fact that we need more and more sophisticated testing techniques is because we understand more about the intricacies of human body and the ways it can interfere with treatment process. Placebo is an obvious example of such interference.

To me, calling a scrupulous testing process a factor that's retarding scientific progress is like saying QA is retarding software progress.