Having watched the BBC 2 documentary over the weekend, I was really pleased to see such an educational account of the clinical trials process.
But the thing that struck me most was the absolutely astounding bravery of the patients taking part. These patients voluntarily underwent major, potentially life threatening brain surgery to test not only brand new physical technology but also a new pharmaceutical medicine.
For someone like me who spends most of my working life behind a computer, I rarely visit the hospitals and certainly never directly see the patients taking part in our trials, this programme was an incredible reminder of why we do what we do. But also that these are the people that are truly making the difference and potentially saving the lives of future sufferers. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to develop life saving medicines that we take for granted today.
On a completely separate note however, the other thing that intrigued me about the trial in question was the profound effect that placebo had on the patients. Although sadly the trial was unable to meet the required outcomes (20% difference in symptom improvement between active and placebo groups) it was clear to see that patients felt a significant benefit.
It has been reported that in fact the patients experience improvement of 12% when taking placebo which in real terms had quite a significant impact on quality of life.
I have long held the belief that we ought to be harnessing this placebo power more in our standard of care and this is just yet another example of how vital our mindset is to our treatment regimes.
I hope that the company developing the drug manage to find a way to take their technology forward into the clinic in future, but I hope also that we start to think about the using the placebo effect as well.
“The Parkinson’s Drug Trial: A Miracle Cure?” Aired on BBC 2 and is available to watch on iPlayer