Editorial
September/October 2008

The Placebo Effect

Hope doesn't change the results of an MRI or blood test or retinal images. By Michelle Theall

Sometimes my legs don’t work right. My brain sends signals it shouldn’t, or it doesn’t send them at all. Always my body feels like I live above a movie theater where the vibrating subwoofer never ceases. Having multiple sclerosis (MS) keeps me on my toes, quite literally. The best medicine I’ve found for staving off the impact of this disease has been activity, specifically tennis and basketball. The quick eye/hand, stop/start movements of both ball sports make my brain work in ways it doesn’t when I run or sit at a desk. In 2003 when I was diagnosed, I started the thrice-weekly injections of Rebif, one of the FDA-approved drugs to slow the progression of MS. My liver protested, which was normal for this drug, I was told. When I developed small strokes in my eyes, I stopped taking it. It was a personal decision, and, yes, I’m perhaps playing Russian roulette with my health. But five years later I can still manage to run 5 miles and rock-climb and snowboard and work.

We want a quick fix. America is a pill-popping nation. The pharmaceutical industry is worth in excess of 350 billion dollars. Roughly 1300 lobbyists work Washington, D.C., to keep the big pharma machine running. Still, we never really needed Nancy Reagan to tell us that drugs are also dangerous, powerful, and sometimes lethal. Even legal and prescribed, they must be used judiciously and with realistic expectations.

Enter Obecalp (placebo spelled backward) for children. Obecalp is an over-the-counter sugar pill marketed toward moms. In fact, a mom named Jennifer Buettner invented it this year. If your child complains about a nonexistent tummy ailment, you can give her Obecalp. But how will you know if she’s really sick? Jennifer claims that moms just know.

Even most doctors will tell you that placebos do have some power. So what’s wrong with tricking our children into believing they are being given medicine if it makes them feel better? Isn’t that more innocuous than overprescribed and often unwarranted doses of antibiotics?

Obecalp scares me because it teaches our kids that a little pill can fix everything. It’s a convenient white lie for a parent up in the middle of the night with a crying child. Children need to learn to listen to their bodies. Every ache and pain in life doesn’t need medical care, but Obecalp-placated kids won’t know that. Perhaps they’ll never know the difference between being seriously ill and having a common cold. Obecalp grants way too much power to the medical and pharmaceutical industries, implying that whatever ails us can be diagnosed, fixed, and treated.

If I had been raised an Obecalp kid, I might not have thought there was anything I could do to improve my health as an adult. I might not have altered my diet or started playing basketball or worked at lowering my stress. I might have continued to take a drug that my body was telling me was doing me more harm than good. I wanted to believe that a drug could cure my disease and ease some of my MS symptoms. But hope doesn’t change the results of an MRI or a blood test or retinal images. And I didn’t need a medical degree to know this.

When a child says she doesn’t feel well—when in fact she’s fine—she’s saying that she wants her mom’s attention. That’s the real diagnosis. The whining is just a symptom. No pill can replace Mom. Hugs and kisses are the only placebos our children need.