• Question: Do pills work all the time?

    Asked by anon-251653 on 24 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Philip Denniff

      Philip Denniff answered on 24 Apr 2020:

      The short answer is no, but that is not very informative. There are many reasons why pills many not work. Most antibiotics are know not to work against all bacteria, so as a doctor do you give the medicine now and hope it works or send samples away for testing before you start to treat the patient. This is the judgement doctors do every day. All medicines have side effects which affect some people more than others. It may be headaches or a rash, some can even be life threatening. How much side effect can the patient tolerate? Some medicines require very fine adjustment of the amount. Too little and it has no effect what so ever, too much and it has too much effect and prevent the patient from living a normal life. Then some medicines work for 95% of the patients but for the odd few it just does not work. In most cases if the pills don’t work it is possible to switch to an alternative medicine.

    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 24 Apr 2020: last edited 24 Apr 2020 12:29 pm

      To add to Philip’s answer, sometimes drugs and treatments work, but not how you think they do.

      Often, just telling someone that they are taking medicine for a condition makes them get better, even if the medicine does nothing (eg sugar pills). This is called the placebo effect, and it can be so strong that it is often used as a control for clinical trials.

      Here is an article from Harvard University about it:
      https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect

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