{"id":514,"date":"2008-02-04T08:15:17","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T22:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2008\/02\/04\/win-and-placebo\/"},"modified":"2008-02-04T08:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-03T22:16:00","slug":"win-and-placebo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2008\/02\/04\/win-and-placebo\/","title":{"rendered":"Win and Placebo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just had, not one but, two odd thoughts in the shower this morning.<\/p>\n

I was pondering the biochemistry of the placebo effect. When you think about it, it is kind of weird that your mental state – how confident you are that you will be getting better – can affect your actual healing process.<\/p>\n

I wondered if one day, some team of biochemists would announce to the world that they had discovered exactly how the process worked – that being hopeful pumped hormone X into your blood, that feeling confident inhibited neurotransmitter Y, and that this affected the healing process.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they could produce a pill! One which genuinely invoked the same biochemistry of the placebo effect, without the patient needing to believe that they would get better quickly! That would be revolutionary!<\/p>\n

But wait… (The first odd thought hit me.)<\/p>\n

…how could you ever clinically test whether it worked? What would the control be? <\/p>\n

\n

I pondered the issue a bit more.<\/p>\n

Could you tell the patients that the drug had no effect? Why would they agree to take it?<\/p>\n

Is it ethical to lie to the patients in the trial? Can you tell them it would help their blood pressure, when it is really to help their Parkinson’s?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it would be useful on unconscious patients?<\/p>\n

Then the second odd thought occurred to me. I was taking getting a too scientific approach!<\/p>\n

I was getting confused trying to reverse the normal demand of a drug trial – proving that it is better than placebo. Rather than admitting I can’t prove my drug is good, I should take the opposite approach: You can’t prove my drug isn’t good. Watch how that works…<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fire the team of biochemists working on the mechanism of the placebo effect.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Produce a sugar pill. (There have been studies that show some sizes and colours of placebo work better than others. Use those to design the most effective pill.)<\/li>\n
  3. Package it up as “Pseudo-Placebo”. Explain that it mimics the biochemistry of the placebo effect, and thus enhances your regular treatment regime.<\/li>\n
  4. Put in big letters on the front of the box that it must be used in conjunction<\/em> with your medical doctor’s recommended treatment. (I am nothing, if not an ethical scammer.)<\/li>\n
  5. Make sure the pharmacist gets a good cut of the margin, so that it gets pushed harder than the other junk they sell.<\/li>\n
  6. Profit!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’ll be selling the first ever honest snake-oil cure. It actually does what it says it will – invoke the placebo effect to aid healing. <\/p>\n

    I’ll be rich!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was pondering the biochemistry of the placebo effect, when I had the first of two odd thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[234,233],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-from-the-shower","tag-medicine","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}