I replied that way because, if we moved this to a tech subject, people here would be horrified at your definition of "effective".
If someone produced an insulin pump that you implanted, worked perfectly for life, but killed 1 person in 1,000 randomly, people would be screaming for the head of the CEO of that company rather than calling it "effective".
But that wouldn't be effective because it's random, not because it kills people. A better analogy is if the pump worked perfectly, but killed anyone who the CEO disliked. That would be effective, yet monstrous.
Effective just means it achieves the intended outcome, it's not a value judgment on the goodness of that intention.