In the event I realised that I was in fact on the placebo, because there was no possible recognisable benefit derived during the many months on which I was on this trial. And I suppose one can say that the only beneficial side effect is that after the trial per se had finished, all persons who had entered into the trial, whether or not they had been on the original drug or on the placebo, were for several months provided with the actual drug itself, prior to its having come onto the market.
When you started to think you were on the placebo, did you raise that with anybody running the trial?
No. It was totally pointless. There were regular questionnaires which were required to be completed after each session, after each - I forget for how long it went, I forget whether it was a month or two months or what will you. And these questionnaires included whether there was any noticeable effect, what one’s psychological view was, whether one felt - how one felt - whether one felt that one was losing one’s manhood, one’s masculinity, all sorts of things of that nature. They were very interesting psychological questions actually. But it didn’t worry me in any way.
And did they actually confirm to you afterwards that you were on the placebo? Or did you never ask, you just assumed?
It was proven to me when I was given the real drug, because that did have an effect [laughs].
[laugh] Right, yeah, fairly conclusive proof then. When you realised you were on the placebo, did you think about pulling out, withdrawing from the study?
Oh, not at all. If I’m part of a clinical trial I know that it, one has to go ahead with it. One undertakes these things seriously. It’s not a lightly taken decision.
It’s quite important if one is doing a test to see to what extent we know that a particular drug has an impact on the people who are taking it, and you must have a control group who are given a placebo, who are given something other than the drug, against which to compare those results. The fascinating thing of course is the number of times that people on the placebo have satisfied themselves that they have received some beneficial effect.
