this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
344 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59207 readers
2520 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Uh, we don't really know how our drugs work (especially the older ones). We have a vague understanding of their mechanisms, but we really don't know how they work. We don't even have a clear idea of what the structures of most drugs look like, and how they interact with their binding sites.
Luckily, we don't actually have to know how they work, to know that they work. Instead we use clinical trials and real world evidence to support their use.
(Fun fact: there's actually a branch of drug development called phenotypic drug discovery which actually does away with the understanding of the mechanisms altogether. )