True, many test subjects treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another inert substance given to groups of volunteers in clinical trials to gauge how much more effective the real drug is by comparison. The fact that taking a faux drug can powerfully improve some people's health - the so-called placebo effect - has long been considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology.
The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher.
Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings - and potential therapeutic applications - of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realising they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself. A special task force of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (a US-government research organisation) is seeking to stem the crisis by quietly undertaking one of the most ambitious data-sharing efforts in the history of the drug industry.
The roots of the placebo problem can be traced to a lie told by a US Army nurse during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of southern Italy. The nurse was assisting an anaesthetist named Henry Beecher, who was tending to US troops under heavy German bombardment. When the morphine supply ran low, the nurse assured a wounded soldier that he was getting a shot of potent painkiller, though her syringe contained only salt water. Amazingly, the bogus injection relieved the soldier's agony and prevented the onset of shock.