ABSTRACT
Leading psychiatrists have counter-argued that, although the effect is modest, the patients will benefit from what they erroneously call the ‘placebo effect’, which they exaggerated to be about 70%. There are three main reasons why a patient may feel better after having been treated with a drug: the drug effect, the placebo effect and the natural course of the disease. Most drugs have conspicuous side effects, so there can be no doubt that the blinding is broken for many patients in most placebo-controlled trials. Drug companies may abort important studies that threaten their income in other ways. Statins are very popular drugs, as they lower cholesterol, and a trial from 1994 showed that if patients at very high risk for a coronary attack received simvastatin for 5 years, 30 patients would need to be treated to avoid one death.
