The Research
A study published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that expensive placebos were more effective than cheaper placebos.
An article from the March 5, 2008 New York Times, More Expensive Placebos Bring More Relief, summarizes the study:
Inevitably, some readers felt obliged to make comments along the lines of “I’m going to sell a pill for a gazillion dollars that will cure everyone.”
Sigh.
Ron Winslow, at the Wall Street Journal was more on point with his headline, Placebos Might Work Even Better With a Brand Name. He went on to observe
Still, this is the more of the same sort of thinking that has led to the current crisis in American healthcare. The brand names Mr. Winslow references are, after all, those of the same old pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers manufacture pharmaceuticals. The cognitive dissonance of “pharmaceutical manufacturers manufacture placebos” alone would wash out any potential benefit. Besides, if you’re selling Buicks, you can’t just double or triple the price of Buicks and hope that the customers will accept that increase without demanding an explanation.
One must give the customer/patient extra value for the extra price - which brings us to the new AlignMap business enterprise:
the placeboutique
the placeboutique
The Sign Of High Priced & Highly Effective Placebos
The Clinical Retail Strategy
First, The AlignMap research staff carefully leeches out any potential chemically-mediated physiological effect from the products while retaining and, in some cases, expanding the expense of producing these placebos.
The key to the placeboutique business plan, however, is offering really prestige name brands. Check out these samples:
Now, those are names that are worth the extra dollars that will make these pseudo-pills expensive enough to be effective.
While the initial iteration of the placebotique tactics limited inventory exclusively to designer brands, we soon realized our humanitarian responsibilities obligated us to carry more affordable generics.
Consequently, we have developed an in-house category of drugs that lack the designer flare and logo but make their own distinctive, low-key statement by virtue of each pill and capsule bearing an embedded blue star diamond.
Remember: at the placeboutique, the diamonds are real; only the drugs are fake
These are quite presentable and, because they do not incur the cost of a designer, can be offered at a substantial savings. While some placebo categories, such as fake immunosuppressive drugs, may remain beyond the reach of a small percentage of the impoverished, more common remedies, such as the fake antibiotics in this line, are widely available at less than $1,000 per dose.
Several other affiliate deals are in the works. While royalties are still being negotiated, a Grey Goose branded bowel prep, for example, could be on the shelves by the end of the year.
Finally, all placebos sold at the placeboutique carry our unique clinical-fiscal guarantee: if the first course of a placeboutique pill does not result in a cure, we will provide a second course of even more prestigious pills at at least twice the price and effectiveness.