Some people consider that offensive because lab rats are discardable. (They even kill all the rats after each study, they are not reused in another study or get free in a rat sanctuary.)
This is a common excuse against double blind randomized trials with a control group. Why are some people getting the "worse" standard drug instead of the new (perhaps) "magical" drug? Why make experiments with them instead of giving the new drug? Why use blind groups and use them as lab rats?
(In every Covid-19 thread, someone propose to use the database of all the known cases and some statistic to simulate a control group (How hard can it be?), and then give everyone in the trial the new drug.)
Expanded version of my comment:
The alternative to using a good clinical trial with all the modern constrains to differentiate between new drugs that are good and new drugs that are bad is to use only some experiments in animals or in vitro. Not every illness affect every animal, so there are some restrictions, or the test in animals must use something that is similar enough.
Imagine that without a good clinical trial in humans, someone approves the new drug. After some time the problems with the new drug may appear. In this case instead of testing the new drug with a small group of people in the trial, you are testing the new drug in the wild with whatever person that is so unlucky to get ill and get the new drug, so you are using the whole humanity as a trial group.
Quoting your comment:
> human patients are very much like lab rats
Some people consider that offensive because lab rats are discardable. (They even kill all the rats after each study, they are not reused in another study or get free in a rat sanctuary.)
This is a common excuse against double blind randomized trials with a control group. Why are some people getting the "worse" standard drug instead of the new (perhaps) "magical" drug? Why make experiments with them instead of giving the new drug? Why use blind groups and use them as lab rats?
(In every Covid-19 thread, someone propose to use the database of all the known cases and some statistic to simulate a control group (How hard can it be?), and then give everyone in the trial the new drug.)
Expanded version of my comment:
The alternative to using a good clinical trial with all the modern constrains to differentiate between new drugs that are good and new drugs that are bad is to use only some experiments in animals or in vitro. Not every illness affect every animal, so there are some restrictions, or the test in animals must use something that is similar enough.
Imagine that without a good clinical trial in humans, someone approves the new drug. After some time the problems with the new drug may appear. In this case instead of testing the new drug with a small group of people in the trial, you are testing the new drug in the wild with whatever person that is so unlucky to get ill and get the new drug, so you are using the whole humanity as a trial group.