May 29, 2008
Placating Our Kids With Placebos?
Brian Johnson, our marketing assistant at LWL Worldwide, sent us an interesting article yesterday.
It’s about a placebo pill developed by a woman who wanted to control her niece’s hypochondria by giving her some kind of pill — preferably not a drug, since her mother-in-law (also a nurse) had suggested Motrin.
Since placebos were not readily available at the drug store, she decided to develop one for kids called Obecalp (“placebo” spelled backwards). Basically a gummy candy that’s meant to taste bad so children think it’s medicine.
The whole article in the NY Times is here.
Okay, hold on a second… I sense good intentions from the inventor — after all, she didn’t want to give her children or her niece REAL drugs — but, come on! What the heck are we trying to teach our kids with this kind of “solution”?
