5 December 2019 - PHARMAC funded research into whether people with epilepsy were imagining side effects from a medicine brand change has been suspended as angry patients point out that deaths have been linked to the switch.
As part of the research, some patients were sent a video on the nocebo effect, where people suffer side effects brought on by a mistaken belief that their medicine is inferior.
The video was pulled and the research suspended yesterday after anger in in the epilepsy community.