Placebos Are Getting More Effective 349
Wired is reporting that the well-known "placebo effect" seems to be increasing as time goes on. Fewer and fewer medications are actually making it past drug trials since they are unable to show benefits above and beyond a placebo. "It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time."
Grunt (Score:4, Funny)
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
Placebos future (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grunt (Score:5, Funny)
What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is critical.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:3, Funny)
And frozen pizza manufacturers...
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:3, Funny)
I would be curious if testing a group of Americans and a group of Europeans will give different strength placebo effects.
What the hell would you test against? A placebo placebo?
Re:Placebos future (Score:4, Funny)
That is a dangerous idea. Over-use of placebos could lead to the evolution of placebo-resistant bacteria! Its happened with antibiotics, it could happen with placebo, too!! Worse, the resistance to placebos could spread from pharmaceutical placebos to more common cures!!!
Be afraid!!!! The Pharma industry would love to destroy traditional placebo-based remedies as chicken soup, a nice cup of tea, a double Scotch or "kissing it better" so they could sell you expensive pills as well!!!! Its a conspiracy!!!!!!
(Is that enough !!!!s to ensure that nobody thinks this is a serious comment?)
Re:WTF (Score:1, Funny)
The little pill that makes men feel good is blue, not purple.
Re:WTF (Score:1, Funny)
And there we have it, the seed to the pill-bubble. The next financial crash will be when the patent-bubble bursts, but the one after that will be the bursting of the pill-bubble. By then the whole economy will be driven by governmental bailouts, which will form a bailout-bubble, and god only know what happens when that one bursts.
Re:Personal Anecdote (Score:3, Funny)
You haven't read much of the old testament have you?
That wasn't a "side effect".
Re:WTF (Score:3, Funny)
No shit, Sherlock?
Sherlock was actually the sleuth from some fictional stories written long ago. So it's inaccurate to use "Sherlock" here.
If I hear one more person use "Sherlock" in the wrong context, my brain is going to explode because they don't know proper usage.
The term you are looking for is "fucktard".
Learn English.
Re:WTF (Score:5, Funny)
I believe it. Have you seen antidepressant ads? The morose horn section alone is enough to make you want to pack it in.
Re:Dangerous ? (Score:4, Funny)
They usually develop symptoms of depression and paranoia, but we've got a pill for that...
Re:Human race evolving? (Score:3, Funny)
Have you gone outside recently and seen the average American (as opposed to person). Healthy and 'brain using' are not attributes I'd apply to them.
I want to mod you as both flamebait and insightful at the same time.
Re:WTF (Score:2, Funny)
why would anybody want to buy a 5-digit UID?