Could Fake Medicine Be As Effective As The Real Thing?

Could fake medicine be as effective as the real thing?

- Lia Grainger

Michael Wharrad held the envelope in his hands, certain of what the paper inside would tell him. The then 72-year-old former investment banker in Kent, England, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease nine years earlier. Now it was 2017—a year since he had been in a trial at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. Researchers were testing whether a drug approved to treat type 2 diabetes could also ease Parkinson’s symptoms. Wharrad received a daily dose of either the drug or a placebo, but he didn’t know which.

During the trial, Wharrad had thrived. His joints ached less, and he could get up from a chair more easily and take walks around the block. Friends and family commented on his obvious improvement. And his score on a Parkinson’s assessment tool improved significantly. “My wife and I were convinced I was taking the drug,” says Wharrad.

But at his end-of-trial meeting with one of the researchers—who also didn’t know whether Wharrad had been on the drug or not—he got a surprise. When he opened the envelope to find out what he’d been taking, he read the word ‘placebo’.

Wharrad’s reaction was disbelief. “I was speechless,” he says. “I had been feeling so much better.”

How Placebos Work

A placebo can be a sugar pill, a saline injection or a glass of coloured water: inert treatments that shouldn’t produce a physiological response. But often they do; Wharrad’s case is not unusual. In fact, placebos are increasingly proving to be more powerful than active drugs in trials—and they may just be the key to reducing our dependence on medications.