Medicine has used placebos as a methodologic tool to challenge, debunk, and discard ineffective and harmful treatments. But placebo effects are another story; they are not bogus. With proper controls for spontaneous remission and regression to the mean, placebo studies use placebos to elucidate and quantify the clinical, psychological, and biologic effects of immersion in a clinical environment. In other words, research on placebo effects can help explain mechanistically how clinicians can be therapeutic agents in the ways they relate to their patients in connection with, and separate from, providing effective treatment interventions. Of course, placebo effects are modest as compared with the impressive results achieved by lifesaving surgery and powerful, well-targeted medications. Yet we believe such effects are at the core of what makes medicine a healing profession.
Read Placebo Effects in Medicine, a Perspective from The New England Journal of Medicine, Ted J. Kaptchuk, and Franklin G. Miller, Ph.D., N Engl J Med 2015, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1504023, July 8, 2015.
Reblogged this on Barrow Blogs: and commented:
Interesting post
glad you like the post Judith, thanks