Press release from the GUERILLA SCIENCE desk

I have had asthma all of my life, a mild case in which I go months or even years without symptoms, but occasionally I'll have an exacerbation that is at best annoying and at worst sends me to the Urgent Care Clinic for a few hits off the huka machine. Because it is usually mild, and there is no predictable pattern to these flare-ups, but also related to my general distrust of the chronic use of pharmaceuticals, I'm not on any maintenance medication and remain satisfied with using my rescue inhaler to control symptoms as needed. So lately, as in for the last month or two, I've been coping with a daily wheezy episode or two and so I pulled out my old inhaler and started carrying it around with me. It wasn't until after a week of using it that I realized something remarkable. I realized it was empty. Despite this fact, it had been completely effective in obliterating my symptoms.

Intrigued, I continued to use it, with the full knowledge of its vacancy. As of this morning, this little trick was still working, and thank god, because I don't have thirty extra bucks lying around.

Could it be the obvious classical conditioning explanation that my long time use of inhalers has trained my brain to associated the sensory experience of using an inhaler with relief for my lungs??? If so, how long can this effect last? It is not quite the placebo effect since I am consciously aware that the ticker is on zero, and I can tell from the taste that there is no medication in it.

In conclusion, if this effect can be demonstrated in a controlled research study performed by people less lazy and more qualified than me, it would save us asthmatics lots of money and really piss off the pharmaceutical company that has been raking in the bucks since the lack of competition due to the (appropriate) removal of CFCs from our inhalers has resulted in the (unexpected) disincentive to produce generics and thus has dramatically inflated price of these life preserving medicines. They may even sent out the thugs over this one! Come on, scientific community, we have nothing to lose but our albuterol!