BBC2 9pm this evening if you're interested.
Horizon : The Power of the Placebo
by Xanthippe 7 Replies latest jw friends
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Xanthippe
They are the miracle pills that shouldn't really work at all. Placebos come in all shapes and sizes, but they contain no active ingredient. Now they are being shown to help treat pain, depression and even alleviate some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Horizon explores why they work, and how we could all benefit from the hidden power of the placebo.
- From the BBC website
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cofty
I heard a bit on the radio about this on Radio 5 this morning. Apparently they have found that you don't even have to deceive patients for a placebo to work. If they stick a label on the bottle of pills marked "Placebo" they still work just as well!
Will watch it later or on IPlayer.
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Xanthippe
Really interesting. Knew that the placebo effect was recognized by scientists because they have to allow for it in double blind clinical drug trials but until now it hasn't been proved. Now Harvard scientists are actually doing placebo effect research including giving fake dopamine pills for Parkinsons, fake analgesics for pain and IBS and even fake surgical procedures to repair fractured spinal vertebrae.
A woman was out on the golf course a week after supposedly having surgical cement poured into her spine to repair it but they only told her that had happened to study the placebo effect. People improved because they believed they would. Apparently we can access the brain's pharmacy, dopamine, opioids and other chemicals just by believing we will get better.
Just as you are beginning to understand it another study was introduced where, as Cofty mentioned, people were actually told they were taking sugar pills but that they might get better anyway because their own body might do it and a significant number did improve! How? The narrator said this highlights the mind body connection. No shit!
Scientists carrying out the studies at Harvard claim that if we could work out how to access the placebo effect healthcare would benefit enormously.
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Seraphim23
I suspect that all science will be able to do is work out how to use the effect as opposed to explaining how it works.
I don’t know if this thought has occurred to anyone but in avoiding the deceptive activation of the placebo effect by telling someone that they are actually being given a placebo to treat whatever, it sheds no light on the cause of the placebo effect because in essence the belief is in the placebo effect itself in such instances, rather than the mistaken belief in a dummy pill the patient thinks is real but isn’t. All it seems to suggest is that belief itself is having an effect, as opposed to the correlates of what belief is in terms on brain actively or chemistry of the brain. The effect works when directed to a tablet because the belief is that the tablet will work, or in the case of a tablet they know doesn’t work if told it is a sugar pill, but the belief shifts to the unknown cause of a real effect called the placebo effect and this also works. The tablet simply becomes a ritual to activate belief itself, which gets called the placebo effect in such instances.
It begs the question of what this effect is because if belief itself were shown to be a simple chemical effect or process of the brain then where is the belief! How can belief be reduced to a mere causal chain or process itself? One could of course come to believe that belief is only a physical thing or a process of the brain, but this belief would render the belief in belief as having power by itself null and void. If this is the case then why does belief work even if the subject knows the pill is a dummy sugar pill? See the problem? It’s a subtle one but I suspect the effect points to something much deeper going on.
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cofty
One could of course come to believe that belief is only a physical thing or a process of the brain, but this belief would render the belief in belief as having power by itself null and void . - seraphim
How much practice do have to do to come up with sentences as convoluted as this?
I wonder why you are sure science won't explain how the placebo effect works.
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Seraphim23
I feel it would cause a contradiction in either trust, honesty, or intellectual understanding to nail down what belief is as part of a formal scientific understanding because science itself relies on trust in order for it work anyway. If belief is the placebo effect but belief also underlies science, then one can’t root out the other. One can’t be separated from the other in such a way as to meet the objective criteria the scientific process demands for everything else. They are co dependant things. Even for someone to say they know something is not really true. In reality they trust in the results of something. The possibility always exists that they have been fooled in some way. However trust is vital to avoid becoming completely paranoid. Trust is intimately linked with belief because they are more of less the same things.