Medical research and its complexities

Medical research is a much sought after field. Do you think we are getting a clearer picture of things with more and more research? It is not true. Claims made earlier are vetoed out today. Newer claims are being made today and we don't know how long they will last? Given this scenario it is evident that things are getting more complicated than ever before. The human mind remains as confused as ever.

Somehow a holistic view of things is missing. Complexity is the cause of medical findings going haywire today. Agreed that there are large amounts of research being done, but without any correct methods the essence is lost. It is believed that excess of research has landed us in such a state rather than a deficiency of the same.

Why is it so?

• Tons of research has lead to conclude a lot of guesswork rather than providing us with the right path to solutions. 
• Since the root cause of things are not understood well, a proper solution is not in the offing leading to unsuccessful attempts.
• There have been conflicts of interest, in some cases doing research has been more for commercial reasons.
• Medicine is not like physics or mathematics. It does have general principles that may be correct most of the time but may not be 100% accurate.

Thus there are a number of unanswered questions today which the medical research has not be able to address. The procedures used in medical research are trial and error methods. We know that research for practising physicians is through clinical trials. Any new medication coming out in the market is first tested on a select batch of healthy people or animals. Next the study analyses the dosage to be given and the side effects of the same. After proven to be safe within the set time duration the same is now tried on actual patients and response studied. In the third phase the drug is now administered to a large number of people and tests done with placebo and conclusions made. Here the researcher may not even know who is receiving the drug. In the last stage with favourable votes for the drug the pharmaceutical companies start marketing it aggressively. It could be many years later that the side effects of the drugs can show up. 

Medical research mainly depends on experimentation and there is no structured way to prove things. It is not a simple case of cause and effect.