Placebo

This was the biggest medical trial ever carried out by the research company.

It involved providing packets of tablets to a great many sufferers for them to take as prescribed, over a set period. The tablets, based on a new formula, were painkillers that were developed to target backache. In this trial, half of the patients receive the new drug and the other half the placebo. This being a tablet of the exact shape and colour, with the same markings as the real thing. It’ll have no pharmacological effect whatsoever. The trial was being carried out at great cost to set it up and run it, with more than a million participating in the trial. Obviously, the security for this had to be one hundred percent for the trial to be regarded as proof of how effective the actual drug is.

For this reason, the file containing all relevant information, of which there was only one copy, was kept, password protected, by the company’s head statistician. This file contained the names and addresses of all the patients provided with tablets and lists indicating who received the drug and who received the placebo.

The trial was coming to an end and the statistician would collate all of the results and provide the relevant information at the company’s imminent board meeting. On the morning that saw the last results coming in from the administering doctors around the country, the statistician was busy preparing his report. Having opened the highly secured file with an extremely strong password, he was in the process of tallying…

…he sat staring out of his office window, thinking about the trip to Disneyland with his wife and children next year and how this was no longer likely to happen.

He was thinking about the extremely rare number of times he had inadvertently deleted a file that couldn’t be recovered throughout his entire lifetime.

He was thinking about attending the board meeting that was scheduled to take place during the afternoon.

He was imagining the look on the Chief Executive’s face when he was given the news.

He began to giggle.

14 thoughts on “Placebo”

  1. What i don’t understood is in fact how you’re not really much more well-favored than you might be now. You’re very intelligent. You know thus significantly in terms of this subject, made me in my view imagine it from a lot of numerous angles. Its like men and women don’t seem to be fascinated until it¦s something to do with Woman gaga! Your individual stuffs nice. All the time maintain it up!

  2. certainly like your web site but you need to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I find it very troublesome to tell the reality however I will definitely come again again.

  3. After study a few of the blog posts on your website now, and I truly like your way of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark website list and will be checking back soon. Pls check out my web site as well and let me know what you think.

  4. Thanks for some other great article. Where else could anyone get that kind of info in such a perfect way of writing? I’ve a presentation subsequent week, and I am at the look for such information.

  5. Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is magnificent blog. A fantastic read. I will definitely be back.

  6. You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!

  7. I have been exploring for a little for any high-quality articles or weblog posts on this sort of house . Exploring in Yahoo I finally stumbled upon this website. Studying this information So i am happy to convey that I’ve a very just right uncanny feeling I came upon just what I needed. I most definitely will make sure to do not forget this website and provides it a look regularly.

  8. Great work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on Google for not positioning this post higher! Come on over and visit my website . Thanks =)

Leave a Reply to smorter giremal Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *