Placebo

Back from vacation and wondering what to blog about, I fell on a very interesting article (click here) published in WIRED magazine and I recommend you all to read it. It is quite long so you can scan through it if you want.

In summary it tackles Placebo. No it is not the Alternative Pop British band that we are all familiar with, but it is about the Placebo effect that is causing headaches and bankruptcies throughout the pharmaceutical industry. In few words placebo is the concept of giving sick people a fake pill and monitoring their improvement. Weirdly enough they do get better.

The interesting aspect of the placebo effect is that you can determine the difference between a bunch of sick people taking the REAL drug as compared to another bunch that is taking the FAKE drug. If the difference is marginal then your drug is useless, however if the difference is substantial then it deserves to be out in the market.

It gets more interesting when the article discusses the fact that a lot of drugs that brought fortunes to pharmaceutical companies back in the 80s might be useless drugs after all, especially drugs that deal with depression.

This would be a very interesting read. So go ahead and take a look.