> nobody really understands why a medication works.

But they work hard to try to understand it because the more they do the better the results for peoplea health. Also it goes without saying that if someone didn't understand many of the things that we do understand then things would be worse for us all.

I feel like we just don't understand a lot about the human body still. Only a century and a half ago we had a US president die because a doctor rummaged around and damaged internal organs (with unwashed hands, because germ theory was still not uniformly accepted) to try to find a bullet on the wrong side of his body. We've come a long way since then, but it's not like we've been doing the field of medicine rigorously for all that long. The best strategy we have seems like pretty much the same as any other scientific field; come up with ideas based on what we know, try them out, and see if they work. That doesn't necessarily give us any actual insight into why it works though.

Yet it takes rigorous years long tests to understand effects of a medication.

That cant be true, theres a paper trail of sign offs of the most likely people to understand the probabilities.

Please define proof of "really understands why a medication works"

It reminds me of fynemans why do magnets work. Yeah sure does anyone really understand anything? Its metaphors all the way down

its a good thing that our lack of understanding of medicines has never killed anybody or have had any intended consequences

oh wait