It often says “might result to heart failure” and really bad stuff like that but how to they know, it’s obviously different on rats than humans and they can’t test on people. How do they know?
In: Biology
I work in a medical department that tests treatments for a number of neurological conditions. Before drugs hit the market, they go through a number of [phases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research) of testing. Early phases are used to determine things like dosing, how quickly the drug is metabolized, obvious safety problems etc. Later phases are used to determine how effective the drug is at addressing the problem. At each step, the research team is required to monitor for possible side effects. These side effects need to be reported to the drug company and the IRB (the research ethics board in most American universities). In many cases, we don’t actually know for sure that these side effects were in fact caused by the drugs. But if they occur reasonably frequently, and we don’t have a good reason to think the drug was not the culprit, they will be included in a list of possible side effects.
Companies are required to do extensive clinical trials before they can sell a medicine and during these they notice and document possible side effects the study participants experience. This is how they know that and which ones and how likely that they are. They do test on people. The people consent to it. The people are often paid very well to be tested on. There is also a placebo or control group in these studies of people who are not tested on to keep a baseline measurement of all these things.
This would take a complicated, long answer but here goes. Probably a lot of the things they list is potential side effects during commercials (“maycauselossofscalpandpenis”) are very unlikely but it’s just a CYA (cover your ass) thing. E.g. you took Xyloclopelcrobzapix and you have numb feet now? Well they probably said something remotely related to that in their ad and they’ll use that as one possible defence if you sued them. That’s a very off the cuff and simple explanation but I tried!
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