Good and Bad drugs

I saw comments today, in a recent New Scientist, about good drugs and bad. In one context good drugs can be considered those drugs that are medically sanctioned while bad drugs can be thought of as those you might buy at a street corner (and I don't mean the corner drug store!). This is not what the commentator meant. He was talking about ethical pharmaceuticals, the kind that are legitimatized by regulatory bodies for use with the general public. This guy was a pharmacologist. He should have known better. He was actually saying good drugs are ones that work, bad drugs are ones that don't and have nasty side effects to boot. This is a dangerous concept and one that will be challenged in the era of Integral Health. In reality, one man's medicine is another man's poison. The idea that there are good drugs and bad ones is borne out of the assumption that we all react pretty much the same way to medicines. Clinical trials have been conducted with this assumption for decades. However, the time is approaching when this will have to change. As a result of advancements in the science of drug therapy and advancements in the understanding of disease, we now know that individual response to drug intervention varies, sometimes to an alarming degree. This is especially true with some of the newer types of drugs called biologics. Many new cancer treatments, for example, have an all or nothing effect depending on the host they find themselves in. Integral health will see us looking at patients as more than a collection of receptors waiting for the 'good' drug. Patients will instead be seen as whole systems with unique attributes that affect how well a drug is tolerated and how well it works. Science and medicine is already conspiring to provide us with tools to identify particular risks for certain individuals needing certain therapies. Coupling with increasing understanding of mind-body dynamics, Integral Medicine will allow us to customize a whole approach (not limited to drug therapy) to a particular individual because we can view them as just that-individual. The mind-set can begin now. The science will continue to evolve. The big question of course, is how drugs will be tested before they hit the market, a clinical trial stage. This is probably one of the biggest hurdles for Integral Health from the prescription drug perspective and I'd welcome any view on this.