Dummy Pills, Guns and Doctors

Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, remarked, “To almost every question there is an answer that is clear, concise, coherent and wrong”! For years we’ve been told that anti-depressant drugs were the be-all-and-end-all for depressed patients. Now, a recent report claims that placebos are just as effective for many patients. So should doctors use placebos (dummy pills) to trick patients? The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) helps to answer this dilemma.

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Opponents of placebo therapy say physicians should never resort to deception. They argue that placebos have no therapeutic value and should be consigned to the Dark Ages. After all, this is 2008 the age of scientific medicine. But how scientific have we been in the recent past? Henry Beecher, a former professor of anesthesia, Harvard Medical School, argued in 1956 that all drugs should be tested with double-blind studies. This would determine whether a drug worked better than a placebo. Physicians were shocked to find that 650 of their time-honoured drugs were duds! They were quickly pulled off the market. Dr. Beecher carried out further studies. He confirmed that placebos cured 58 percent of those complaining of seasickness and 33 percent of those in pain. They also helped 35 percent of those suffering from angina, headaches, tension, anxiety and the common cold. Dummy pills even reduced the temperature of some patients with fever. And a few patients with Parkinson’s Disease improved. A study at the University of Oklahoma reported a frightening occurrence. A patient suffering from anxiety was given a placebo. Fifteen minutes later his blood pressure fell, his skin became clammy and he collapsed. High priced psychotherapy has also been linked to an elaborate form of placebo therapy. In a study at Vanderbilt University untrained college professors achieved the same results as well-trained psychologists when treating psychological problems in students. Researchers have found that people can also become addicted to placebos. One schizophrenic patient became so addicted that she consumed 10,000 dummy pills in one year. But not all placebos are pills. Danish surgeons divided patients with Meniere’s disease into two groups. 50 percent received the standard operation, the other half were treated with a small skin incision. An equal number of patients were helped by the sham surgery. But why had ineffective drugs worked so well in the past? Simply because television commercials claimed they were effective and millions of viewers believed them. Besides, many over-the-counter drugs are used for ailments that are self-limiting in time. So patients will get better whether they swallow a $20.00 drug, a sugar pill or pour themselves a scotch-and-soda. Tincture of time would cure them. But is it ethical to use placebos? Sir William Osler, a great judge of human nature, once mused that it was the taking of pills that separated humans from animals. Today he would roll over in his grave if he could witness the epidemic of “pillitis” among medical consumers. And the host of profit motivated companies willing to provide them with drugs of questionable value. The best argument for using placebos is that dummy pills don’t kill. And they protect consumers from their own folly. The philosophy, “let the buyer beware”, simply doesn’t work when it comes to drugs. Too many people still naively believe they can find nirvana by swallowing a pill. They forget that every drug must be metabolized by the liver and excreted by the kidneys. Moreover, there’s often a fine line between what’s tolerated by these organs and what destroys them. The primary cause of accidental liver poisoning in North America is a best selling minor painkiller! In fact, even seeking medical attention today is becoming more dangerous. The U.S. Department of Health Human Services reports there are 700,000 U.S doctors and they cause 120,000 accidental deaths every year, or 0.171 accidental deaths per physician. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) says there are 80 million gun owners in the U.S. which cause 1,500 accidental deaths per year or just 0.000188 deaths per gun owner. It’s a trifle shocking that doctors are 9,000 X more dangerous than gun owners! And almost everyone has more than one doctor. Need I say more about placebos and doctors?