Aspirin should be reassuringly expensive

Last year, those rationalist killjoys at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prosecuted Reckitt Benckiser over four products: Nurofen Migraine Pain, Nurofen Tension Headache, Nurofen Period Pain and Nurofen Back Pain. Their gripe was that ‘each product claimed to target a specific pain, when in fact it was found that they all contained the same amount of the same active ingredient, ibuprofen lysine.’ These variants were often sold at a higher price than the basic brand, despite being pharmacologically identical.

I am sure the ACCC have their chemistry right; their psychology, however, is wrong. For me, Nurofen didn’t go far enough. I want to see even more specific variants: ‘I Can’t Find My Car Keys Nurofen’, perhaps, or ‘Nurofen for People whose Neighbours Like Reggae’. Again, these need contain no additional ingredients: the only distinguishing feature would be the packaging and the promise.

I’m not being entirely frivolous here. Research into the placebo effect shows that branded analgesics are more effective.