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> Should they be doing both? I can't imagine shipping code that I don't know how it works, but it passes tests...

If that were the criteria, then we would not have medicine at all, because biological systems are so incredibly complicated, nobody understands even a tiny fraction of how a particular chemical will affect them.

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I don't think that's quite accurate. We know first-order biochemical effects for a lot of drugs. There are always side effects, but they're side-effects, and those are largely understood as well.

Psych drugs have difficulties because they aren't used for their biochemical effects, they're used for their psychological effects, and psychological effects of biochemical processes are poorly understood.

An extra foible is that many medications have psychiatric side effects.

So even if you're prescribed a statin for the biochemical effect on cholesterol you might get some of the purported psychiatric effects.

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