Clearly it wouldn't meet the standards for a phase III clinical trial. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's worse. Pharma studies and plant studies both have their own sets of methodological issues, so it's hard to really compare them on how likely their findings are to be accurate or whatever. E.g. because elderberry isn't patentable, that eliminates most of the incentive to basically make up results like what happened with Tamiflu. But you also don't have the money to run multi-thousand person trials. How do these really compare with one another? It's hard to say.
For me, elderberry seems like the clear winner over Tamiflu because there are no negative side effects. At worst, it just doesn't work, but it only costs ~$0.65 per dose and the evidence that it does work is actually pretty compelling even though it would obviously be better if there were multi-site trials with larger sample sizes.
I'm afraid you _maybe_ just made the same mistake as those that knee-jerk down-voted you -- it would be incredible if there really were no side-effects at all; some people must be allergic? No negative interactions?
> it would be incredible if there really were no side-effects at all; some people must be allergic? No negative interactions?
Fair enough. Perhaps a more appropriate way to phrase that would be that it using it doesn't require any more precaution than trying any other new food for the first time.
Clearly it wouldn't meet the standards for a phase III clinical trial. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's worse. Pharma studies and plant studies both have their own sets of methodological issues, so it's hard to really compare them on how likely their findings are to be accurate or whatever. E.g. because elderberry isn't patentable, that eliminates most of the incentive to basically make up results like what happened with Tamiflu. But you also don't have the money to run multi-thousand person trials. How do these really compare with one another? It's hard to say.
For me, elderberry seems like the clear winner over Tamiflu because there are no negative side effects. At worst, it just doesn't work, but it only costs ~$0.65 per dose and the evidence that it does work is actually pretty compelling even though it would obviously be better if there were multi-site trials with larger sample sizes.