Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[falconer66a]

Neurologically Compromised Little Girls Can Imagine Their Health

I agree if it shows promise in Rett then numbers for that will have to be smaller. Still will need placebo controls though.

Sure, just gotta have a placebo arm in a test of epilepsy efficacy in little girls with Rett. Everybody knows little girls can imagine and make happen all sorts of unexpected good health outcomes.

Who, let us consider, will explain profound reduction or absence of epilepsy in Rett girls in a one-armed (no placebo) Anavex trial of Anavex2-73 as merely the placebo effect? The little girls and their mothers were so hopeful that the little pink pills they took would actually keep epileptic reflexes from occurring in the brain that their mutual hopeful thoughts were the real cause. Anavex 2-73, itself, was merely a placebo; the absence of epileptic fits for several weeks, for the first times in those girls' lives, was only a placebo effect artifact.

The experts here on IHub declare: There can not be any valid clinical tests of any neuroactive drug unless it's double blind, with a large n= number taking the drug, and an equal number taking a cleverly disguised equivalent pill, but without the active ingredient. The whole business is "blinded," with only a computer knowing which bottles of pills are authentic, and which are the real deal. Nobody, doctors, nurses, parents, or the little girls will know (until AFTER) the trial, who was taking what.

Again four-year old little girls with Rett syndrome have powerful mental and physiological abilities. When prompted to think they can willfully overcome their epilepsy, they can stop those fits by strong, willful thinking on the matter. Happens all the time.

Same, of course, with old people with Alzheimer's. In a poorly constructed clinical trail, a few of those demented folks can (and apparently did, in Australia) "believe away" their reduced cognition. They "decided" to think better, and they fooled the researchers down there with improved cognition.

All of this can only be the placebo effect.

Now, we can return to rational thinking, ourselves.