• Question: Is it sad to see a medicine not work? from ginger ninja

    Asked by anon-251281 to Robert on 21 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Robert Ives

      Robert Ives answered on 21 Apr 2020:

      Hi. It is disappointing when a medicine doesn’t work. Most ‘potential’ medicine that make it into clinical trials (testing in humans) either do not work very well or are unsafe to use. Scientists might have worked on these failed medicines for many years, so a lot of time and money is spent on something that hasn’t worked. But, it is still very important to test these medicines and show that they don’t work or are not safe as this stops them from given to lots of people who won’t benefit from them at all.

      Even when medicines do make it ‘to market’ (where doctors are able to give them to patients), these don’t always work for everyone. Some people might become better quite quickly, whereas some other people will not get better at all.

      The important thing to remember as a scientist is that some of the medicines we work on will work and will help people (and animals) feel better and live longer. Helping to develop even one medicine is very satisfying and makes a career in research and pharmaceutical sciences worthwhile.

Comments

  • Photo: Donna

    Donna commented on :

    Yes – sometimes we have a drug that should work, but the fungus or bacteria or even the virus have developed mutations which mean that the drugs no longer work as effectively and you need to use much more to kill the pathogen. Sometimes you would need so much that it would damage the patient

  • Photo: Freya

    Freya commented on :

    Yes, it is very sad. Especially when we don’t know exactly why the medicine doesn’t work. People with cystic fibrosis get really long-lived lung infections that affect their ability to breathe and it is very hard to find antibiotics that actually control the bacteria in their lungs. When doctors take a bacterial sample from the person with CF, and send it to the hospital lab for antibiotic testing, often the lab results say the bacteria should be killed by a particular antibiotic – but when the doctor gives that antibiotic to the person it doesn’t do anything. We don’t fully understand how we can make these lab tests better able to predict what a drug will do to bacteria in a person rather than in a test tube.

  • Photo: anon-251281

    anon-251281 commented on :

    Thanks you for the replies to my question. facinating to hear from the best