Survey: Half of US doctors use placebo treatments

[Thorne]

But that requirement in and of itself also seems to support the previous supposition that we are not being served well by the process.
Seems that an autopsy, while perhaps not being able to prove drug induced death, should be capable of determine if death cause is not related to drug ingestion.
Does that mean if a member of the drug group dies and a member of the control group dies it is not a side effect of the drug?

That depends. Yes, it may be possible to determine if the drug caused death. But what if, for example, a person in the test group has a massive coronary and dies, but no one in the control group dies? Was the death caused by the drug? Probably not, but can you be sure? It's possible that there is some unknown reaction which the drug has with persons of a certain genetic type, say, which weakens vessels in the heart. There may be no way to determine this in these studies, but there's no way to say that the drug did not cause it, either. It's safer to show that death might be a side effect.

[DuncanONeil]

Maybe!

That depends. Yes, it may be possible to determine if the drug caused death. But what if, for example, a person in the test group has a massive coronary and dies, but no one in the control group dies? Was the death caused by the drug? Probably not, but can you be sure? It's possible that there is some unknown reaction which the drug has with persons of a certain genetic type, say, which weakens vessels in the heart. There may be no way to determine this in these studies, but there's no way to say that the drug did not cause it, either. It's safer to show that death might be a side effect.