Chances are, if you're reading this you're not exactly...trusting...of Big Pharma and the drugs they claim are saving so many lives.

After all, we talk a lot about side effects, flawed trials, and the other ways in which the mainstream aims to maintain the status quo of immediately drugging any illness or condition your body even hints at developing.

It's a pretty carefully woven web, to be sure. One in which I find plenty of my friends and loved ones still get caught. This morning, I came across a study that might help detangle the web.

One of the arguments I hear coming from family members whose medicine cabinets are stuffed with patent medicines goes something like this: "What about all this research that says it works? It's science!"

This certainly isn't going to blow every clinical drug trial out there, but it's definitely major. We all know that many studies used to demonstrate the efficacy of patent medications compare the drug in question to a placebo. Somehow, these placebos have become equated, in many people's minds, with "sugar pills."

But are they so innocuous?

Thing is, we just don't know. As outlined in a study appearing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, there are absolutely no regulations governing what's in those placebos. And, of course, placebos can affect the outcome of trials in a major way.

How many commercials or marketing materials have you seen in which a drug company says, sure, there were some side effects associated with this drug, but they were similar to what people experienced with a placebo.

Not knowing what's in that placebo, how can that possibly mean anything? Perhaps a small amount of the drug is in the placebo. Or, in cases in which companies claim participants got worse taking a placebo, how do we know something more sinister isn't going on?

Now, I understand there might be people who would dismiss this line of thinking as overly dramatic. But all I want to know is: Why?

Why aren't placebo ingredients disclosed? If drug companies have nothing to hide in conducting these trials, why isn't there more transparency concerning one of the most essential factors in the modern drug trial?

To illustrate how a placebo can affect the outcome of a trial, the researchers discussed a trial for a drug used to treat anorexia linked with cancer. The placebo contained lactose. Thing is, lactose intolerance is pretty common among cancer patients.

When participants taking the placebo complained of stomach problems, it made the drug look better -- but was the drug relieving stomach problems, or was the placebo triggering the intolerance and causing the symptoms?

In fact, the researchers who conducted the Annals study, finding that the contents of placebo pills were disclosed only 8.2 percent of the time in the 176 trials they reviewed, concluded that the nature of the placebo can influence trial outcomes -- and that the formulation absolutely should be disclosed.

Before I let you go, there's another argument I hear pretty often: "My doctor said I need this drug, and he knows what he's talking about."

That may be so. But it's no secret that doctors sometimes get paid big bucks to show their support for Big Pharma. Curious about whether or not drug companies are paying a particular doctor? You can find out here.

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