What do you perceive to be the main benefits and criticisms of RCT - Essay Example

Introduction Randomized control trial or RCT is the most powerful research tool to test the efficacy of medicines. The s are chosen randomly and administered the medicines under controlled environment, sometimes with placebos so as to reduce the psychological barrier to being treated with the testing of new medicine for defined disease. The placebos can be defined as inactive substances that are given to patients to satisfy their symbolic need for therapeutic relief. The medical science uses placebos along with newly discovered medicine or some clinical intervention under controlled conditions to gauge the effectiveness of other analgesics.

The RCT facilitates research and development of new clinical interventions and contribute towards the enhancing of medical knowledge.Benefits RCT is highly relevant in the present time of advancing medical science that encourage researchers in their effort to discover new models of methods and medicines to reduce pain and find cure for diseases. It is most efficient way of validating the effective outcome of new clinical intervention. Criticisms The most important criticism is that RCT treat human beings as guinea pigs who may experience adverse impact that may be or may not be fatal.

Hence, RCTs endanger one’s life. RCTs are also criticized because even with consent, they are ethically wrong to put someone’s life at stake because people who receive the clinical intervention are expected to experience a particular type of change in some physiological dimension. RCT is also not feasible or appropriate in some cases like cancer screening where the impact is visible only after a long period of time.