On a serious note, I'm enjoying keeping an eye on the US Health Care debate from afar (Australia, to be precise). Anybody think it will result in sustainable change for the better?
As someone who is keeping an eye from up-close, hahahahahaha! Sustainable change for the better. Good one. Let me sum up American politics for you: we have the best PR in the world. This means that with enough money, you can convince people that your brand will cure them even if you're selling sugar pills. That's why American pharmaceuticals spend more on marketing than R&D. It also means you can convince people to hate socialized medicine, even if they're recipients of medicare/medicaid.
Hence, in America, the only time something gets done is when a group with lots of money/power gets even more money/power out of it. The good news is that there are a lot of conflicting powerful interests. Car manufacturers and many banks, for example, have a lot to gain from a public option for healthcare - the former hopes to lower expenses for their retirees (huge expense for them). The latter hopes to stop mortgage foreclosures tied to medical expenses. The bad news is that often, the way to optimizing for powerful interests isn't very close to optimizing for the interests of the public at large.
True it's not because of what they are made off, but it doesn't matter. What matters is they work.
That's why so many people take them (they work), and why they always fail when tested against placebos - it's because they basically ARE placebos. And very effective ones too.
The typical response when hearing that is: get rid of them, they do nothing. But the correct response is use them, because placebos are very effective.
Coke was initially sold as a medication.
In the 80's, blind trials showed that people preferred the taste of Pepsi - but when they knew the brand, they preferred Coke. Coca cola executives were so worried by this that they launched "New Coke" which was more like Pepsi, and people preferred it in blind tests. But it failed utterly, and the original Coke itself continued to be popular, as it has been to this day.
See the "Rx for Success" side bar on page 2. The last two items are branding and clever names.
Behold... Placebocin!
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.chem/msg/d0e62fe17efdc0d0...