A Good Idea

[arthwollipot]

This from the "Feedback" column of New Scientist magazine, 26 April 2008. I'd give you a link but I'm too busy subscribing to their podcasts.

COUNTLESS clinical trials of new drugs have compared the supposed cure with a placebo to see if the drug really is effective - but what did the people getting the placebo actually swallow? Jennifer Buettner, an American "mommy", as she describes herself, learned to her dismay that there was no recognised, standardised placebo available anywhere in the world. So she developed a "pharmaceutical grade placebo", gave it a clever name - Obecalp - and is now selling it over the internet.

It contains dextrose and natural cherry flavour and is guaranteed to be inert. Who might want to buy Obercalp? Buettner is hoping paediatricians will. "I was amazed to learn of the massive over-prescribing and lack of efficacy in children's drugs," she says. "Why, when drugs are not needed, couldn't children, adults and seniors be given a placebo by their medical authority figure instead?" Obecalp, she concludes, "fills the gap when medicine is not needed but children need something more than a kiss to make them feel better."

Tell me why this isn't a good idea.

 

[Amapola]

I don't think physicians are allowed to prescribe something like a suger pill, or at least that is the way of it in the USA. I remember asking Mr. Amapola about it, and it was his understanding that physicians had to prescribe something that really worked, or tell the patient they did not need anything.

It makes sense to me that there would be such a rule, as otherwise how would I know my physician was actually prescribing a real, tested drug, or was simply giving me a sugar pill? If I actually have something wrong with me, I want to get an actual treatment for it. If I *don't* actually have something wrong with me, I want to know that too.

 

[Jimbo07]

I don't think physicians are allowed to prescribe something like a suger pill, or at least that is the way of it in the USA.

That's weird.

A pharmacist friend of mine once told me that over 50% of scripts work out to not much more than a placebo.

I don't want to identify this person, in case I have somehow misunderstood.

 

[slyjoe]

And why isn't there a standardized placebo? Because not all medicines are pills, let alone cherry flavored.

Placebos are used in clinical trials, not in the course of treatment. Also, I don't know if a sugar pill needs a script. Do pharmacies carry sugar pills?

Pediatricians should buy this? Over the internet? And give it to their patients? I think she needs a new business plan.