Mega Placebos Plus ™ : Bringing the Power
of Placebos to All Parts of Your Life!
Mega Placebos Plus ™: Because Everyone Needs Hope!
Mega Placebos Plus ™ brings the awesome power of placebos to you in dozens of new ways. Absolutely nothing works as well as the multi-purpose placebos and placebo services we offer, and we guarantee it. And every product from Mega Placebos Plus ™ is so easy to use--there's really nothing to it! And there's nothing to worry about!
Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Placebos That Were TOO Effective!
The awesome power of placebos is nowhere better illustrated than in Saddam Hussein's weapons program. Using placebo technology stolen from the headquarters of Mega Placebos Plus, Saddam was able to build a weapons program using nothing more than placebos! Think about it: why build expensive, dangerous, real weapons when you can make the world fear your safe and inexpensive placebo weapons? Saddam wielded international power with his placebos of mass destruction--nuclear placebos, botulism placebos, anthrax placebos, smallpox placebos--you name it, we feared it. Saddam's placebo weapons scared America so much more that we panicked and pretty much obliterated Iraq instead of giving the rich trade deals that we normally hand out to dictators. Frankly, Saddam's placebos were TOO effective. This may be the world's only case where placebos had a few adverse side effects, but don't worry--Saddam is alive and well, and working on plans for his future campaign to become governor of California. Meanwhile, we at Mega Placebos Plus encourage you to only use the power of placebos for good.
First, please understand that medical science has recognized placebos as one of the most effective tools available for the treatment of numerous diseases. In fact, no medicine, drug, or surgical procedure of any kind can be commercialized unless doctors can prove that it is even more effective than placebos. Placebos are the GOLD STANDARD for all medical treatments! Drug companies spend billions of dollars trying to find concoctions that can beat the proven power of placebos, and what they find often only provides a slight benefit--and plenty of unwanted side effects at terribly high prices. Who needs that when you can use placebos? You can get results almost as good as the full-priced solutions--and without side effects!--by simply using the inexpensive placebos provided by Mega Placebos Plus™. This is true for ANY DISEASE! It used to be that only physicians could gain access to placebos, but now anybody can, thanks to state-of-the-art technology developed at Mega Placebos Plus ™. Order your lifetime of supply of placebos from us today. Almost nothing is more effective!
JAN. 2009 UPDATE: Mega Placebos Plus™ has just completed a major medical study showing that the more medical placebos cost (placebo drugs, that is), the more people think that they are being helped. If the placebo medication is cheap, people think it must be good. If it costs an arm and a leg, people think it must be powerful. Mega Placebos Plus ™ is pleased to bring this new medical breakthrough to you in the form of a hefty price increase. By doubling all our prices, we are making our placebo medications even more effective than before. That's great news from Mega Placebos Plus ™.
Extending the Power of Placebos to New Areas!
Placebos have been proven time and time again in medical studies, but we have discovered that placebos are potent tools in many other areas as well--business, international affairs, education, dating, computer science, homeland security, social science, child reading, household cleaning, auto repair, environmental science, and theology. Many of our techniques are being patented, using state-of-the-art business method patents, so you better not try any of our methods yourself, or you'll be sorry. Some of our most popular life-enhancing placebo-based tools and services include a weight loss product, a hair-growth product, a muscle-building ointment, and a fatigue-fighting product. Here is just a sampling of what Mega Placebos Plus™ can do for you:
Placebo X-Rays!
Don't want to risk sterility, cancer, fatal mutations, or irritability of the bowels from x-rays? Tired of constantly being irradiated with dangerous x-rays by dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists, surgeons, and family doctors? Only use medical professionals bearing the Mega Placebos Plus ™ Safe X-Ray ™ label. And health professionals, with our exclusive Safe X-Ray ™ system, you'll be able to charge less for X-rays and actually make more because the Mega Placebos Plus ™ Safe X-Ray ™ costs only a tiny fraction of a real x-ray system, without the safety risks and without the need for professional training! Your patients still experience the thrill of feeling like they are being irradiated with dangerous x-rays, they still hear the mysterious sounds of an x-ray machine and wear protective lead shields during the experience, but there is no radiation at all. It's all a placebo. A few minutes later, you pull out one of our standard x-ray photos to show them and give them whatever news you feel is most helpful. As you know, most x-rays are meaningless anyway, but help patients feel like they are getting the best in health care. Isn't that what really matters?
Mega Placebos Plus ™ Safe X-Ray ™ is now proudly uses in most British health care facilities, helping Britain to save billions of dollars and helping Brits feel better about their health care and health care system, without giving them cancer or unsightly mutations. It's a win/win for everybody, thanks to the power of Mega Placebos Plus ™!
Green Placebos: Feel Good about Saving the Earth!
Megaplacebos Plus has achieved DRAMATIC SUCCESS with our green eco-placebos. The power of placebos to make you feel better, without the risks of actually changing things, is especially evident in this area. When you pay a little extra for a product that says "GREEN" or "RECYCLED" or "EARTH FRIENDLY" on it, you're paying a little more for an effective placebo. Keep it up! The earth depends on you - wink, wink!
Customer Support!
Customer service is such an important aspectof modern business. Anyone who doesn't offer customer support is shunned, but it's so expensive to actually do it. Mega Placebos Plus ™ Placebo Support service is your total solution! We provide a webpage where customers can go to registers complains--all of which vanish into our secure Complaint Receptacle without bothering your employees with all the whining that disgruntled consumers tend to do. Plus for a small additional fee, we offer you a dedicated toll-free line where consumers can call to register their complaints. Most of these are screened out in our proprietary "Labyrinth of Doom," in which callers must navigate complex and bewildering menus to reach the support area. Most of those who reach that are then weeded out by our proprietary mix of irritating music, annoying statements ("your call is important to us - call volume is unusually heavy, so be prepared for lengthy delays"), and a 40-minute wait before they are connected to . . . an answering machine. The rare caller who passes those trials can pretend to leave a voice message, but nothing is recorded and you and your team can continue your work without annoying consumer feedback. You create the appearance of offering customer service, which makes people feel like there is support, but there's really nothing there. Placebo support is a best practice among many leading companies who are using our advanced, patent-pending technology. Isn't it time your business enjoyed the benefits of Placebo Support?
Road Construction
Nothing points to growth and progress in a community more powerfully than road construction. Real road construction is terribly expensive and should be avoided, when possible. But with placebo construction techniques, you can help your community experience the same boost in prestige and esteem that actual construction brings, without the cost! Shut down a few lands of traffic for a couple of months using the orange cones, barrels, and signs that we provide in our Mega Placebos Plus Road Construction Kit, repaint the white lines, periodically shut down all traffic for an hour or so, and soon the good people of your community will be bursting with pride. "Our town is growing - and soon traffic will be getting better!" By the time you remove the trappings of placebo construction, people actually will think that traffic has been improved, and they'll be anxious for more construction to occur next summer. With our help, you can keep them happy with road construction for years. You can even raise local taxes to pay for all the heavy construction - and use the money for more important purposes (we'll let you figure that out).
Mega Placebos Plus ™ was the official contractor of Utah's 2002 Winter Olympics. Utah had a tight budget, but couldn't miss the opportunity to impress its own citizens and the world with the image of dramatic growth and progress. Using the customized deluxe Olympics version of our kit, the State of Utah was able to conduct massive placebo construction efforts across most of the state for several years leading up to the Olympics ("Welcome to Utah: All Roads Closed"). Relatively few citizens questioned why so many lanes of traffic were constantly closed for construction when no construction crews were ever seen. The illusion was perfect. Utah shined in the international spotlight, and state officials were able to put millions of dollars earmarked for construction to much better use. The program was so successful that it has continued to this day, with no end in site. Many other states are also adopting our services. Don't let your state be the last one to get on the placebo construction bandwagon.
Home Security Systems
You can pay thousands of dollars for home security systems to help keep burglars out, only to face the annoying side effects of false alarms and repeated difficulty in getting into your own home. Why bother with such expense and inconvenience, when you can simply place Mega Placebos Plus Home Security Stickers and Signs around your home? Our window stickers and yard signs look just like those made by real home security companies, and have been proven effective in making would-be burglars think that your house is secure. Thanks to the placebo effect, it is (in many cases). And it costs only about 5% of a full-fledged security system.
For a limited time only, when you purchase your home security from Mega Placebos Plus ™, we'll also provide you with a Mega Placebos Plus Vicious Guard Dog in the form of three "Beware of Dog" signs. A placebo dog can provide some of the same security benefits as a real dog, without the annoying side effects of doggy doo-doo, constant feedings, fur all over your house, lengthy walks, mindless barking at night, and the risk of YOU doing jail time when your dog attacks a child who ventures onto your yard. Real benefits and no dangerous side effects: your Mega Placebos Plus Vicious Guard Dog may well be your best friend when it comes to home security. And he (or she - you can choose the gender and change it anytime, again with no side effects!) comes free when you order now.
Placeo Side Effects Now Available When Needed!
A leading scholar of placebology has published a brilliant article on placebos about the need to add harmless side effects. He calls for creating placebo side effects - side effects that people just think they have, so they will think their medication is real and not "just a placebo." (Some of the ignorant masses just don't believe that placebos are better! Intelligent people will feel best when they know they are getting the power of placebos, but the ignorant have to be tricked into getting better with placebo power.)
We at Mega Placebos Plus ™ are one step ahead, as usual, and have just announced the formation of a new spin-off company, Side Effects, Unlimited, which provides customized tools for convincing patients that they are suffering from side effects.
Meanwhile, our core business of new applications for the placebo effect is growing by adding our own customized side effects. For example, our placebo anti-virus software now comes with a 60-page booklet about potential bugs, and warns that in rare cases, your entire hard disk may be trashed. This convinces some that our software was developed by Microsoft and meets the highest quality standards for Windows. To strengthen the placebo effect for business consulting services, we have leaked vicious rumors about how we occasionally steal corporate secrets and sell them to competitors, causing our customers to view us as pariahs that require constant montoring and extensive legal contracts - but now even more companies want to work with us and learn what we know (or what they think we know). And for our weight loss product, we've added a long list of warnings about side effects (a sample: "may cause irritability, halitosis, eczema, dandruff, toenail loss or death") and have provided an 800 number for patients to call to report side effects. The phone has been ringing off the hook, and customer satisfaction has skyrocketed!
Muscle Building Ointment
Just as effective--or even better!--than any dietary product or drug on the market, Mega Placebos Plus™ Muscle Building Ointment brings you the power of placebos for building muscles, especially in the arms and upper torso. The two-part ointment comes in a 5-gallon container which represents a lifetime supply. Actually, it's nothing but tap water, and you are encouraged--even required--to refill the product yourself to keep the container full. Apply the ointment several times a day, following these simple directions:
Shake the full 5-gallon container vigorously for at least 15 minutes before applying, then spread liberally over arm and shoulder muscles. Allow to dry or wipe off, as desired. Repeat at least twice a day, more often if possible. Refill often. (For best results, shake even harder or longer, or use a larger, heavier container.)
No side effects, no harmful chemicals (unless you're using New Orleans tap water, in which case you may want to order our anti-cancer placebos) -- just pure water and the power of placebos!
Mega Placebos Plus Weight Loss Elixir
Much better than Calorad or similar weight-loss products with nasty animal by-products, the amazing new Weight Loss Elixir from Mega Placebos Plus ™ is 100% safe and free of all chemicals except pure water. This placebo-based elixir has results PROVEN to be more effective that nearly all weight-loss pills, dietary aids, or devices. For just $25, you get a 2-month supply (a 2-liter bottle of our Weight Loss Elixir), which will help you lose weight quickly as you follow the simple directions:
Take 2 tablespoons twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, on an empty stomach.
Note: to ensure that it is taken on an empty stomach, don't eat or drink anything else for two hours before and after taking Mega Placebos Plus Weight Loss Elixir.
That's it! Just two tablespoons a day of our pure, natural, chemical-free, side-effect free, animal by-product-free, low-cost placebo-based elixir will help you lose weight right away. And if needed, you can accelerate your weight loss by taking the product three of four times a day (always on an empty stomach).
How do we make it? Our weight-loss product begins with ordinary bottled water, which we convert to a full-strength placebo elixir using the power of advanced labeling technology. After we've changed the label, we sell it directly to you at a slight markup-- far less than the $50 a bottle you might pay for competitive products, but still expensive enough to help you think that it must be good. You lose weight, save money, and spare your body from bizarre and possibly harmful compounds like decomposed animal hides (bovine collagen).
Here is a heart-rendering testimonial from one of our many satisfied customers:
Your elixir is fantastic, and much cheaper than competitive products that don't work. For months I was wasting my money on collagen-based products, herbal supplements, hormone pills, Chinese medicine, and lots of quack products. Nothing worked very well. Then I learned that most of these products had never been compared to the medical gold standard of placebos, and thus probably weren't as good. So I thought, why not try placebos? At first it was hard using your product and following the directions -- I hated the empty stomach part -- but as I disciplined myself to use the placebos as directed, I found that I was losing weight, and lots of it! All without harmful drugs or side effects! Mega Placebos Plus, you guys are winners!
Hair Growth
Major pharmaceutical companies have developed a variety of solutions that are claimed to occasionally stimulate hair growth. But if you analyze the composition of these products, they're over 95% water! So why not settle for a 95% match of the product composition by using a pure water placebo? And if you're using herbal mixtures sold on TV or the Internet, you can be assured that our placebos are probably 100% as effective as what you're buying, and instead of $100 a month, you can get on a powerful placebo program for as little as $5 a month. Get all the benefits of most commercial products without the risks that come from chemicals!
Truly, for most people, our placebos are just as effective as any of the numerous hair growth lotions and potions out there. And ours are absolutely free of risks. You're not going to have your hormones become unbalanced or develop ugly rashes when you use our product. And you can use as little or as much as you like, as often or as rarely as you like. It really doesn't matter when you're using hair growth placebo. It's so easy to use -- there's nothing to it!
Mega Placebo Plus Maid Service
Having a maid can be a tremendous benefit: it's not just a status symbol, it's also offers an excuse when the house is a mess ("darn that maid -- she missed the living room!") or when you've lost something ("now where did that maid put my keys this time?"). But real maids cost a lot --and the house just gets dirty anyway when the kids come home, and then they get chewed out for messing up the maids careful work. Why not improve family relationships and save a load of money by using our placebo maid service? Our maid comes by for about 1 minute a week, just long enough to knock on your door and fill in her timesheet, then leaves. You get all the bragging rights that go with a maid service, and you can blame your maid for just about everything, while paying only a tiny fraction of typical maid service. And you won't have to stress out your children! When it comes to maid service, nothing works like Mega Placebo Plus Maids!
New! Mega Placebo Plus Maid Service will also take care of your duct cleaning as well. We are licensed providers of the placebo-like duct cleaning services of Astral Ducts, Inc.
Environmental Placebos
Mega Placebos Plus is proud to introduce new Eco Friendly Gasoline Saver to help you feel good about saving the environment. A single drop of our placebo-based Eco Friendly Gas Saver in your gas tank helps you get the same number of miles per gallon that you can get with expensive non-placebo gasoline additives. More importantly, using our product helps you to feel good about saving fuel -- and not just saving fuel, but saving the whole earth!
Business Placebos: Consulting
When your company needs to make a major decision or solve a big problem, you know that nobody wants to listen to you, no matter how smart you are. The executives will want to bring in an outside consultant to either confirm what they are going to do anyway or to create the illusion that something is being done. Consultants can be great, but they cost a bundle and take forever, plus they eat up loads of corporate resources as they prepare their gigantic reports that nobody is going to read anyway. Who needs that when you can get the same results with placebo consulting? Our placebo consultants can achieve nearly the same results for just a tiny fraction of the time and expense.
Within hours after placing your order, the Mega Placebos Plus ™ Placebo Consulting Firm will bring you huge, impressive binders filled with verbiage and graphics, and you'll receive glitzy animated PowerPoint presentations filled with generic but impressive details that you can customize--if you think anybody actually looks at the content. You'll be able to shelf our reports and ignore them, just as with full-priced reports from consultants, but our reports are purely placebos! They help you and your company feel like they're taking aggressive action, without the side effects and without the cost. In fact, because you're not wasting money on costly consultants or implementing unproven and dangerous fads, you're actually taking positive actions to improve the bottom line of your company--so you CAN legitimately feel good about what you've done. Improved morale, cost savings, decreased time drains on employees- you can expect you stock to bump upwards with every consulting project you do with Mega Placebos Plus ™ Placebo Consulting Firm!
Business Placebos: Corporate Training
As for training of employees, there's no better place to turn than Mega Placebos Plus ™ Corporate Training to look trendy and to cover your rear. Not every course can be replaced by placebos, but you should consider placebo courses whenever the details of course content is less important than the image created by having the course, especially when the content of the course can be boiled down to a single sentence such as "Quit being such a jerk" or "Be nice to everybody, including Bob" or "Leave the opposite gender alone, you filthy old men!". We have the highest respect for our high-priced professional competitors in the training industry, but let's be frank: professional training programs can cost you many hundreds of dollars per employee in addition to lost productivity as your employees waste a full day or more just to hear some overpaid, poorly dressed loser drone on for endless hours about something utterly lame that they should have already been taught at age five by their parents (or single-parent, guardian or caregiver, to be inclusive). So you get stuck with this huge bill, your employees waste large amounts of time, and in the end they are pretty much the same pathetic group you started with, but at least you look trendy and, if needed, can tell prosecutors that you brought in courses to prevent the type of thing someone is suing over. Yes, but you can get the same benefits without the waste and expense by using Mega Placebos Plus ™ Corporate Training. Our program lets you combine up to a dozen "fluffy" courses into one 10-minute session with our placebo instructors, who can even be virtual online instructors or a mere tape recording to save you even more money. Your training room is scheduled for as many days as you want, so you can advertise plans for your five-day advanced sensitivity and inclusion training retreat for all employees, but class is going to get out early and save you a bundle!
We hit the basics for about 5 minutes or less: be nice, don't discriminate, don't touch, don't flirt, no burping, don't slurp so loud, etc., and then explain for a few more minutes that being a jerk can get you fired, and if someone is a jerk, it sure isn't your company's fault. Then everybody goes back to work. Cheap, fast, and easy. And, if you want to look even better, you can add as many hours of "actual" training as you want by replaying a recording of the ten-minute course over and over while your employees work. If they revolt, just turn the volume way down--some might call that subliminal training, but it's training nonetheless, and part of our powerful, cost-effective placebo approach. Admittedly, our form of training isn't a true placebo, because it actually contains a small amount of the normal "active ingredient"--just not enough to do you any serious harm.
Placebo Protection for Your Computer
Nobody connected to the Internet is safe these days. Hackers can mess with anyone's computer, and viruses run rampant, swiftly wrecking havoc across the world--or so people think, and it's been proven that this fear causes a great deal of productivity-sapping anxiety. Why spend thousands of dollars on software and firewalls for a false a sense of security, when you can have it for just $5 per user with Mega Placebos Plus ™ Computer Security System? This low-cost system offers you the same peace of mind as high-priced solutions--and installation is much easier and MUCH SAFER! Our download process does not require downloading software from the Internet, with the risk of exposure to worms and hackers, and it does not require running a program from a CD or floppy disk, with the risk of embedded viruses or bugs. In fact, there is no downloading at all: you just tell the employees one morning that your computer group installed advanced security software on all computers overnight. And you can offer updates as frequently as you want. What the employees get is a 30-page user's manual written in highly technical jargon by a Japanese computer specialist who flunked English. They won't understand what the software does or even where it is, but they'll feel a whole lot better about their security--and isn't that what it's all about.
Incredibly, Mega Placebos Plus ™ Computer Security System also offers a Premium Version of our system for just $6 that ACTUALLY WORKS, providing better security than almost any commercial product out there. The Premium Version user's manual has the following instruction printed boldly on the cover of the manual: "For best results, disconnect your computer from the Internet and any other network, and do not install new software of any kind."
For a little more, you can get our ultra-realistic computer security system that comes complete with special software that slows your system down to about half the normal speed, giving you the full psychological impact of a costly conventional security program. Side effects! They make the placebo more convincing and thus more powerful.
Placebo Meals
Mega Placebos Plus ™ is proud to be the primary supplier of "food" and "meals" for most major airlines as of 2004. Studies confirm that passengers are much happier when they think they've had something to eat versus eating nothing at all. We are now expanding our "food" services to include public schools. With Mega Placebos Plus ™, there is no limit to the power of placebos!
Background
Vast bodies of science confirm the reality of the placebo effect. In fact, placebo pain killers have even been shown to affect the brain in ways similar to the most powerful harmful pain killers on the market. Here's an excerpt from a 2002 press release, as reported at The Orange Papers:
Placebo And Opioid Treatment Activate Same Neuronal Network
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 08 [2002] -- Placebo treatment appears to activate the same part of the brain that is activated by opioids, Scandinavian investigators report.
Dr. Martin Ingvar, of the Cognitive Neurophysiology Research Group in Stockholm, and colleagues compared regional cerebral blood flow measured by positron emission tomography while inducing pain or a control stimulation in nine subjects. Their findings appear in the February 7th issue of Sciencexpress, the online edition of the journal Science....
"The experience of pain is always subjective," Dr. Ingvar told Reuters Health.
The placebo effect is influenced by several factors, including a person's expectations of the treatment and their desire to feel better, the investigators point out. By showing that placebo and an opioid agonist activate the same brain regions, the findings suggest that some of these same factors may be involved in triggering the pain relief.
Here are some further references, as cited at Biopsychology.com:
Barsky, A.J., Saintfort, R., Rogers, M.P., Borus, J.F. (2002). Nonspecific medication side effects and the nocebo phenomenon. JAMA, 287, 622-627.
Benson, H. and Friedman, R. (1996). Harnessing the power of the placebo effect and renaming it "remembered wellness." Annual Review of Medicine, 47, 193-199.
Blakeslee, S. (1998 a). Enthusiasm of doctor can give pill extra kick. New York Times, Science Times, October 13, p. D4.
Blakeslee, S. (1998 b). Placebos prove so powerful even experts are surprised. New York Times, Science Times, October 13, pp. D1, D4.
Brown, W.A. (1998). The placebo effect. Scientific American, 278:1, 90-95.
Harrington, A. (Ed.)(1997). The placebo effect: An interdisciplinary exploration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holden, C. (2002). Drugs and placebos look alike in the brain. Science, 295, 947-948.
Luparello, T.J., Lyons, H.A., Bleeker, E.R. & McFadden, E.R. (1968). Influences of suggestion on airway reactivity in asthmatic subjects. Psychosomatic Medicine, 30, 819-825.
Luparello, T.J., Leist, N., Lourie, C.H. & Sweet, P. (1970). The interaction of psychologic stimuli and pharmacologic agents on airway reactivity in asthmatic subjects. Psychosomatic Medicine, 32, 509-513.
Moerman, D.E. (2001). Cultural variation in the placebo effect: Ulcers, anxiety, and blood pressure. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 14:1, 51-72.
Montgomery, G. and Kirsch, I. (1996). Mechanisms of placebo pain reduction: An empirical investigation. Psychological Science, 7, 174-176.
Petrovic, P., Kalso, E., Petersson, K.M. and Ingvar, M. (2002). Placebo and opioid analgesia -- imaging a shared neural network. Sciencexpress.
Other Links:
Beam to J.L.'s cracked planet.
Cough Syrup No Better Than Placebos
Going Beyond Placebos: The Power of Side Effects
Wishful Medicine by Stephan Herrera - an article in Technology Review, 2005.
Placebo Surgery by Dr. Christopher Kent
The Problem with Placebos - a page with many links to interesting articles about the placebo controversy.