> But drug trials are not designed to measure the placebo response; they are designed to measure the drug against the placebo
Absolutely. That's why the drug companies are pooling their data and doing the Placebo Response Drug Trials survey that I write about - to find out what's going on.
Drug companies are not exactly running new trials to make sure that their drugs are working this year as well as they were ten years ago. The failures of older drugs to beat placebo happen in trials in which an older drug, an experimental agent, and placebos are all pitted against one another. I doubt these failed trials will have any effect on patents.
Well, ceoyoyo, if you think major depression, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Parkinson's disease -- all cited in my article -- are just a matter of people "feeling bad" who should try "feeling better," I wish you great good luck in getting through the latter half of your life.
I'm the author of the Wired article, and I would encourage people to read the article itself before taking Peter's post on Science-Based Medicine as the final word on the subject. Peter's blog runs on two sites, and if you visit the other thread here -- http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/09/placebo_is_not_what_you_think.php -- you'll see that Peter's well-informed readers offered up many citations supporting my central thesis that he seemed unaware of, many of which were contained in my article. I know that words like "crappy" and "smackdown" feel really bracing to post or read on a blog, but they're no substitute for science-based medicine.
Thanks for the link, ScuttleMonkey.
(Thanks for the link to my article, BWJones, which doesn't cover prosthetics, but does cover why more veterans will need them than in previous wars, and the pioneering approach of an Army doctor who is seeking smarter ways to ease soldiers' pain as they go through the evacuation process.)
By "this project," Sears clearly meant JFETS, not ICT as a whole. As I say elsewhere in the story, JFETS received its major funding from a clause appended to the 2003 Defense Appropriations Act by Senator James Inhofe -- the same Republican senator, by the way, who said he was "more outraged about the outrage" about Abu Ghraib than he was about the torture earlier this year.
It was, by the way, really a coincidence. I was invited down to ICT last year after writing a story about The Matrix, in part because Paul Debevec, who I mention in this story, developed the technology used to create the "bullet time" sequences in the original film.
I didn't know that the Times was also working on a story until about three days ago -- the kind of "coincidence" that gives journalists heart attacks. In his fine piece for the Times, however, Clive Thompson focused on the console videogame aspect of ICT, while I focused on the "mixed reality" battle environments at Fort Sill. So there's hardly any overlap in our stories, thank goodness.
I thought often of "The Veldt" when I was visiting the Fort Sill installation, and while I was writing the article.
Bradbury was my first favorite writer, back when I was 10 or so.
At the point in the article when I say that the Prado character tells the major that the hospital is off-limits for targeting, a colonel who was also watching the simulation interjected, "If you drop a bomb on a maternity ward, CNN's gonna wanna hear about it."
Slashdot Mirror
> But drug trials are not designed to measure the placebo response; they are designed to measure the drug against the placebo Absolutely. That's why the drug companies are pooling their data and doing the Placebo Response Drug Trials survey that I write about - to find out what's going on.
Drug companies are not exactly running new trials to make sure that their drugs are working this year as well as they were ten years ago. The failures of older drugs to beat placebo happen in trials in which an older drug, an experimental agent, and placebos are all pitted against one another. I doubt these failed trials will have any effect on patents.
Well, ceoyoyo, if you think major depression, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Parkinson's disease -- all cited in my article -- are just a matter of people "feeling bad" who should try "feeling better," I wish you great good luck in getting through the latter half of your life.
Yes, it is. A section of my Wired article is devoted to that research, in fact.
Not "studies," ceoyoyo. Meta-analyses of hundreds of studies. That's evidence.
I'm the author of the Wired article, and I would encourage people to read the article itself before taking Peter's post on Science-Based Medicine as the final word on the subject. Peter's blog runs on two sites, and if you visit the other thread here -- http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/09/placebo_is_not_what_you_think.php -- you'll see that Peter's well-informed readers offered up many citations supporting my central thesis that he seemed unaware of, many of which were contained in my article. I know that words like "crappy" and "smackdown" feel really bracing to post or read on a blog, but they're no substitute for science-based medicine. Thanks for the link, ScuttleMonkey.
(Thanks for the link to my article, BWJones, which doesn't cover prosthetics, but does cover why more veterans will need them than in previous wars, and the pioneering approach of an Army doctor who is seeking smarter ways to ease soldiers' pain as they go through the evacuation process.)
By "this project," Sears clearly meant JFETS, not ICT as a whole. As I say elsewhere in the story, JFETS received its major funding from a clause appended to the 2003 Defense Appropriations Act by Senator James Inhofe -- the same Republican senator, by the way, who said he was "more outraged about the outrage" about Abu Ghraib than he was about the torture earlier this year.
If you think that line was "glorifying" war, you must be a huge fan of the Matrix.
I didn't know that the Times was also working on a story until about three days ago -- the kind of "coincidence" that gives journalists heart attacks. In his fine piece for the Times, however, Clive Thompson focused on the console videogame aspect of ICT, while I focused on the "mixed reality" battle environments at Fort Sill. So there's hardly any overlap in our stories, thank goodness.
I thought often of "The Veldt" when I was visiting the Fort Sill installation, and while I was writing the article. Bradbury was my first favorite writer, back when I was 10 or so.
At the point in the article when I say that the Prado character tells the major that the hospital is off-limits for targeting, a colonel who was also watching the simulation interjected, "If you drop a bomb on a maternity ward, CNN's gonna wanna hear about it."
Bruha, it's "I See O" Hall, and I tell the tale of how the building got that weird name in the article.