Word: pills
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...placebo” has been around for centuries; it originates from the Latin for “I shall please,” which then developed into a derogatory term for a medication aimed at pleasing the patient more than healing him. Today, it refers to a simple sugar pill used in clinical trials as a control to judge the effectiveness of new drugs. Ironically, the placebo today tends to equal or even surpass modern pharmaceuticals in effectiveness: the “placebo effect.” Placebos are relevant in our lives in not just medicine, however?...
...percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent.” And 50 percent of drugs that fail during clinical trials do so because they cannot improve upon the sugar pill. Pills for Crohn’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression have unexpectedly come up short against the placebo. Even surgical procedures and gene therapies have been proven no better than a skin incision or saline solution, which are in themselves placebo treatments...
...security facility in which convicts shoot at each other with corrosive paint—perhaps because they are so playful. But Atwood never loses her edge. When the titular flood wipes away humanity, it comes not in sheets of rain but as a plague contained in the inoffensively named pill BlyssPluss. The Flood is at the heart of the story—its imminence dictates the actions of God’s Gardeners, a religious environmental group to which survivors Ren and Toby once belonged. A “plural Noah”, the Gardeners consider themselves as destined...
...while anxiety about the economy has led some women to become more strict about their birth control use, the recession has forced others to take more risk. Among women who use birth control pills, 18% reported skipping pills, skipping months or waiting to get a prescription filled in order to save money. All of these practices render ineffective the Pill's use as a contraceptive, and yet a quarter of women who are financially worse off than last year reported inconsistent use of birth control. At the same time, national abortion rates continue to fall...
...worry that worse violence could erupt in one of the hemisphere's poorest countries. Clashes were already under way Tuesday between Zelaya supporters and soldiers and riot police swinging clubs and shooting tear gas. "Micheletti may actually be less likely to accept a settlement now, given what a bitter pill Zelaya's return is for him to swallow," says Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society in New York and editor of the Americas Quarterly. "If so, both sides are probably en route to an institutional train wreck." (Read why Obama won't use the M word...