Potential cost? 1. Financial cost of treatment. 2. Side-effects of treatment.
Number 1 is an important question: if it's a few dollars a month, it's on a par with a placebo. If it's a hundred dollars a month, I would hope it behaves better than a placebo (although a saline injection has a larger placebo effect than a sugar pill, and a $40 bottle of wine tastes better than a $10 bottle of wine, so there's a potential placebo multiplier just in the pricing). If it's tens of thousands of dollars a month, I'd expect some pretty dramatic results. So pricing is a factor, and I haven't seen that mentioned.
The second issue is side-effects, but this is a drug that's already passed clinical trials, so hopefully these are known and recognised.
It'd be great to see this experiment rolled out to double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, but until that happens, I'd still be willing to give it a try.
>It'd be great to see this experiment rolled out to double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, but until that happens, I'd still be willing to give it a try.
Google "liberation therapy" for an example. This bad science really is damaging, as it costs everyone a lot of money, hooks in vulnerable patients, and doesn't provide any benefit over the placebo effect.
The placebo effect can be strong, certainly, but if you're relying on that you are much better investigating the psychological factors that underpins it, rather than hoodwinking patients (whether deliberately or due to ignorance).
Potential benefit? Improved health/physical condition.
Potential cost? 1. Financial cost of treatment. 2. Side-effects of treatment.
Number 1 is an important question: if it's a few dollars a month, it's on a par with a placebo. If it's a hundred dollars a month, I would hope it behaves better than a placebo (although a saline injection has a larger placebo effect than a sugar pill, and a $40 bottle of wine tastes better than a $10 bottle of wine, so there's a potential placebo multiplier just in the pricing). If it's tens of thousands of dollars a month, I'd expect some pretty dramatic results. So pricing is a factor, and I haven't seen that mentioned.
The second issue is side-effects, but this is a drug that's already passed clinical trials, so hopefully these are known and recognised.
It'd be great to see this experiment rolled out to double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials, but until that happens, I'd still be willing to give it a try.