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On Sat 29 May, Ida & Andre Kamphuis wrote: > Dear listmembers, > > Placebo > I enjoyed reading Ida's message on Placebo procedures used in scientific testing, and I am certainly not going to criticise the inclusion of placebo 'dummies'. I actually was an unwitting placebo recipient in a trial in which I was involved ( for the drug Remacemide). I set to, with all my finely tuned skills after years of measuring myself for my levodopa analysis program, only to find that I seemed to be getting a highly accurate zero! My neurologist later confirmed that I had indeed been a control. There was one placebo in every four people tested in that trial. Although it is no different in principle, I am a little worried about the way that the placebo concept was applied in the recently-reported fetal cell transplants. You get through a lot of Parkies with batch sizes of 20, don't you. Actually, I feel rather more sympathy for the 20 genuine cases: Who I wonder specified the package, because it did not seem to be very effective. If the package had been the subject of one of two tests and had proved to be productive in those tests then OK, but what went wrong in the big batch? If the package was only expected to produce the rather poor results which were achieved, then we have another problem: It would have to be a particularly dedicated researcher to consign 20 PWPs to a procedure having such an uncertain outcome. On a lighter note, I cannot help imagining a cartoon showing an Operating Theatre where the team are playing a hand of poker across the operating table, and someone is saying "These placebo ops certainly relieve the strain, don't they?" Regards, -- Brian Collins <[log in to unmask]>