About Those Pills...

[kevin_standlee]

As most of you know, Lisa suffers from tinnitus. It's a very odd case, in that it's only in one ear, and the associated hearing loss is atypical as well. (If you see her wearing an earphone in one ear, it's because it's pumping in noise that partially, but not completely, offsets the tone.)

We've gone through a lot of treatments, none of which have worked, and have spent a lot of money on doctors, none of which has actually helped. Which is one reason I find the ads for a particular substance (I'm not going to help their marketing further by naming it) on the radio that claims to cure tinnitus to be so annoying. No, we haven't tried it, and we're not going to do so. Lisa was the one who first noticed the ads and complained at me about the people preying on desperate people such as her. For a longer, better-developed take on the subject, I recommend this article by Dr. Marsha Johnson, who has recently been trying to treat Lisa's tinnitus.

If those substances really work, the promoters should submit them to proper clinical trials -- if it's anything other than the placebo effect, the inventor will make a lot more money than selling it snake-oil fashion over the radio. Unless it is snake oil, of course.

Comments

[glenn-glazer.livejournal.com]

Let me say this carefully: the placebo effect works on total snake oil if you believe it to be the real thing. This not a reason to buy snake oil and certainly not a reason to sell it.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Also, while the placebo effect does sometimes work, it rarely works forever. That is, some of these quack remedies may be effective initially, but unless they really address the root cause, eventually they'll stop working.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the substance is or if it works.

The promoters might not have the $100,000,000 to $800,000,000 that clinical trials would cost. Further, if they don't have a patent on the substance, they can't recover the cost of trials even if they could pay it, because competitors would jump into the market without having that cost.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for double-blind tests to determine whether bed rest or activity is a better treatment for a sprained ankle.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

If you listen to that ad it states that it is a 'homeopathic' remedy. Homeopathy has nothing in it. It's water, colors, flavors [sometimes], and 100% placebo. And as such, it helps in about 25-30% of the cases tried because that is the same rate as doing nothing. It does -steam- me to hear that and similar ads.

But that may be bitterness on my part. I can't fool myself with placebo.