Mike Burr - log

[bio] Randomized time release?

If we had some kind of coating on a pill that had the property of releasing the medication after a random length of time, seems like that'd be very useful for "trials". If everyone promises to take the meds at exactly the same time every day for the whole trial, you can count on (in theory) the release of the medication to be "at a random time each day", so folks taking the meds don't know when they're taking meds.

But, would that really be the result? Does the randomness really cancel out? Seems like you'd have two right next to each other because yesterday's was late and today's early. It seems like it'd be random still, but I guess "it remains to be proven" that that's really the same as "at random averaging one day intervals". Part of this [distortion?] maybe is because I don't want people to die. So, probably need to account for that.