Price-Ficher Pharmaceutical Company announced today a new wonder drug would be made available to the nation's physicians within a week.

"The new drug was developed by the General Delivery University College of Medical Fraud," said Randall Blat, president of Price-Ficher. "It will be marketed under the brand name Nostrum."

According to sources at the GDU, Nostrum is actually a placebo.

"The FDA requires all these studies on whether a new drug is safe and effective, using a sugar pill called a placebo as the alternative," said Dr. Albert Boguz, head of the Department of Drug Promotion GDU.

"For example, when Claritin went through its clinical trials, 43 percent of the people taking the drug showed improvement, but 32 percent of the people taking the placebo also showed an improvement, showing the placebo was almost as effective as Claritin," said Boguz.

"We saw that information in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine," Boguz added.

The GDU scientists quickly searched the web, and found that hundreds of drugs that have been approved by the FDA had very little significant effectiveness over the placebo.

"They actually refer to the 'placebo effect' in the studies," said Boguz. "It seems the power of the mind over body is sufficient that if people believe they are going to get better, they actually do," Boguz added.

The GDU team quickly figured out they were sitting on a gold mine, and called a GDU alum that worked for Price-Ficher in their drug development program.

"The Price-Ficher people realized that since the placebo had been tested so many times, and actually worked, we had a new drug that could be put on the market instantly, and make a few billion dollars," said Boguz. Boguz would not disclose how much GDU was paid for passing on the discovery, but Boguz and his team immediately left for Switzerland after the interview with the Bandersnatch.

"Nostrum can be used for virtually every kind of ailment," said Mr. Blat, of Price-Ficher. "It is the most widely tested drug in America, and has been proven to work in at least 30% of the situations, which is more than many drugs can prove."

"And, the best part of Nostrum is that it has absolutely no side effects, unless you are diabetic, and costs virtually nothing to make, which means our profit margin is going to get really huge," he added.

FDA officials refused to comment on the announcement of Nostrum, but admitted privately that the placebo effect was proven to be real, and that there was nothing to stop Price-Ficher from marketing the placebo under a brand name. "Actually, we're surprised it took the drug industry so long to figure out that they could sell the people a completely worthless pill that people would believe in and heal themselves, and they could make oodles of money as a result of the combination of marketing and belief."

Copyright 2001 by Hugh Holub