The Secret Life of Placebos

[BridgeTheGap]

Recent studies prove that prescribing pills that don’t contain any drugs can be as effective as the real thing—assuming that, in most cases, patients don’t know they’re swallowing fakes. This begs a number of questions, including whether doctors can capitalize on this placebo effect without lying.

On the one hand, “it seems sensible to make every effort to enlist the body’s own ability to heal itself—which is what, at bottom, placebos seem to do,” Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writes in the Boston Globe (May 9, 2010). But how would a doctor honor the principle of informed consent? * One tack would be to notify patients that they’re being given a fake pill. Humans can learn on a subconscious level to respond to certain stimuli, like Pavlov’s dogs, Tuhus-Dubrow points out, so our brains could react to the placebo without conscious faith in the drug.

Placebos could also be integrated with real treatments. In one successful study, actual drugs were combined with placebo “reinforcements.” Says one of the study’s authors, “If can produce approximately the same therapeutic effect with less drug, then it’s obviously safer for the patient, and I can’t believe they wouldn’t want to look into doing this.”

http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/prescribing-pills-placebo-effect-drugs.aspx?utm_content=10.26.10+Arts&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[hedgehog]

1. If placebos work so effectively, why haven't we found cures for cancer, diabetes, etc?

For that matter, why aren't we still using medieval medicines?

[BridgeTheGap]

2. Precisely because medical science has no clue why placebos work. n.t

[hedgehog]

3. Here's my point - you live in 1450 and believe that touching that

saint's relic will cure your gout. If placebos worked, why don't we still use saint's relics to cure gout?

[BridgeTheGap]

4. In that case, there is a counter belief: that if you remained ill, you must have deserved it for

some past transgression.

[Silent3]

5. That question doesn't make much sense.

Why should the effectiveness of placebos be in anyway linked to what we have or haven't found cures for?

As for using medieval medicines... well, some of us probably still are. Many herbal and other "natural" medications could well be the same things that were prescribed in medieval times. Some medicines may actually be effective due to their specific chemical compositions, other may merely be placebos.

Since the placebo effect is a psychological effect, many medieval medicines that might have worked only as placebos might not work well as placebos today because the psychological associations, the cultural story lines surrounding specific substances or rituals, don't appeal to people in modern cultures in the same ways.

[Celebration]

6. have pharmaceuticals found cures for cancer, diabetes, etc?

If not, then pharmaceuticals must not be effective (by your logic).

:eyes:

[LeftishBrit]

7. Yes, for some forms of cancer, they have.

And for diabetes they at least can give you a normal life expectancy.

Of course, there is a lot more medical research to be done.