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A Double Blind Efficacy Trial of Placebos, Extra Strength Placebos and Generic Placebos

Jim Stanfield, co-founder, The Institute for Further Research

Clinical Protocol: Sufficient samples of placebos and extra strength placebos were obtained from a pharmaceutical company that ran an ad in the back of the National Enquirer. The generic placebos were obtained at Quickie Mart. The active ingredient in the generic placebos is C 12 H 22 O 11 . Each group of pills was then transferred to plain containers encoded p, esp & gp for placebos, extra strength placebos and generic placebos respectively. This code was sealed in an envelope and mailed back to the Institute to be kept in the safe to await the conclusion of the trial.

Three subjects were then recruited to evaluate the effectiveness of each pill. Since none of the test subjects were suffering from any symptoms of illness, they were asked to evaluate the pills on the basis of general effectiveness. In lieu of payment for being guinea pigs the subjects were supplied with the pills at no cost, but were told that they were to imagine that they were paying one dollar per pill for the placebos, two dollars per pill for the extra strength placebos and fifty cents per pill for the generic placebos.

Each subject was instructed to take three pills per day, at mealtime, for one week then rotate to the second type of pill for the second week and so on.

There was a good deal of guessing, as to which pill was which.

Jerry won the coin toss and elected to take the extra strength placebos for the first week. Phil took the regular placebos and Ralph, the generic placebos. I thought about changing their names for this article, but the subjects took a shine to the idea of seeing their names in print.

During the second week of trials, there was a bit of bad luck when Ralph decided to drop out of the study because he said that the extra strength placebos were too difficult to swallow (see illustration 1). I could quickly see that this would make the final data analysis more dodgy.

At the end of the three-week trial Jerry and Phil reported that they thought that the extra strength placebos were nearly twice as effective as the regular placebos and that, on average, the generic placebos were only half as effective. Both subjects agreed, however, that the generic placebos were the most pleasant to take and that they would simply quadruple the recommended dosage to bring their effectiveness up to the potency of the extra strength placebos. As side effects were minimal, this seemed to be an acceptable compromise.

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