How You'd do Trials without Placebo

A reader commented, wondering how you'd do experiments, especially basic molecular research, without using placebo. Wouldn't my little "no placebo for the mentally ill" idea be disrupting research? It wouldn't stop a thing.

Doing basic research in animals won't be stopped at all. Give rats all the sugar pills you want.

But when you are doing basic efficacy trials in humans with mental illness--ie., asking the basic Gomer question of whether med X has any effect whatsoever--then using placebo as your control med is stupid. You already know there will be limited response to placebo and it is unfair to give a known nothing to sick patients. You can test the basic efficacy and do proof of concept in med X just by giving patients the damn med and seeing how they respond to it. If docs are really that desperate for a control med, then give the patients who'd otherwise get placebo something that is already known to work...Lithium, Zoloft, an antipsychotic, whatever.

No more placebo. If the research world was under an ethical cloud for giving placebo to AIDS/HIV patients, then they are under the same cloud for giving placebo to the mentally ill.

Email me questions if you have any.