New drugs get on the market without being supported by any research. When you get treated for an illness, you become part of an experiment.
How often did you go to see a doctor and left with no prescription medication? Not often! As we all know we live a life style that predisposes us to stress, quite often forcing us to fall pray to illnesses and symptoms, having a doctor that gets stock in a dilemma how to diagnose, and therefore treat. Ultimately the doctor says “no problem I have the right drug for you!” So the prescribed drug is a drug that just came on the market. Later you found out that the drug company allows practitioners to prescribe the drug “off label” meaning the drug lacked enough research studies, and is experimental. Then you take the drug as indicated, and few days later you experience new symptoms that sometimes make you even sicker. Then the prescribing physician concludes that the drug was discontinued, secondary patient experienced side effects of the drug, when instead he should've stated that the drug in fact had adverse reactions and it should be contraindicated for that particular health condition or symptom.
And that's how the data is gathered without being reported further to the FDA. Therefore for every new drug that's prescribed “off label” there should be a centralized statistical data base where every physician would be required by law to report the finding of its treatments, specifying the exact symptom and the outcome of the drug prescribed.
Another problem is the fact that when the patient starts a new drug, he or she might be already taking other 10 different medications. So how does a physician distinguish the reaction of one drug when combined with so many others? With this in mind, not only the drug was prescribed “off label” but the entire treatment was after all empirical, with other words, experimental. So for the future when you go to visit your doctor you might end up participating in a research study without your knowledge or permission.
