Attack Of The Powerful Little Sugar Pill

There is a passage in Comfortably Numb, a book chronicling the history of Pink Floyd, where promoters of one of the band's earlier gigs at an underground club in London handed out sugar cubes assumed to be laced with LSD to everyone coming through the door. Although the cubes were placebos, many of the concertgoers nevertheless danced the night away in hallucinatory-like trances.

This incident came to mind as a read a terrific piece titled "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why" by Steve Silberman in Wired.

The bottom line is that pharmaceutical companies must prove that new drugs are more effective than placebos and for reasons that are unclear, that is getting harder to do even thought the Placebo Effect has long been acknowledged -- and thought to be understood.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma marches on: Pfizer has agreed to pay a record $2.3 billion fine -- the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice -- after pleading guilty to illegally promoting four drugs and submitting false claims for uses that were not medically accepted.

Hat tip to Donkelphant