Day 82
I had an interesting discussion about the placebo effect with Jordan today. Ths entry will be something of an a-priori overview about the matter.
A placebo is a sugar pill. It has in itself no medicinal properties that a teaspoon of sugar doesn't have (namely, none). Control groups in scientific experiments are often given placebos as a way for the researchers to help gauge the effectiveness of the real medication being tested.
Interestingly, there is a very strong effect on placebo-takers much of the time, particularly with anti-depressant medication. That is, the sugar pill-takers actually get better more often than the third control group, consisting of people who are taking no pills at all. What's more, there are apparently documented cases of positive placebo effects on even physiological illnesses, even tumors in some cases.
Life is full of placebo effects. If we are convinced that some object or activity will assist us with some ailment, it likely will do so, merely on account of our believing it will. To use an example from a friend (a reader here as well): she received an amethyst (a kind of purple crystal) as a gift to help her with sleep troubles. It was said at the purveyor (ie. crystal healing shop) that the amethyst has special powers such that if you put it under your pillow at night it will help you sleep better.
They're half right. As a skeptical type, I want to pull my hair out when people tell me how effective such 'cures' can be, but I am humbled by the fact that there is a genuine working element to the process. It isn't so much the stone, as the belief, that helps to cure. And though I want to say it is bunk on account of the stone being neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for better sleep, I also must admit that given the belief, the particular stone does become a sufficient condition for better sleep!
It is infuriating. Entire industries have thrived on this phenomenon. And, if I'm to thrust the point particularly hard, I'd note that because of such industries people have probably died when real medical attention was the proper route, rather than some sort of pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo. After all, as much as the body does have its own healing powers, and as much as willpower and belief can potentially suppliment the body, no body has ever sent AIDS into remission with a placebo, or regrown a leg, or demolished advanced malignant lung cancer.
You might say that mass hysteria is the opposite of the placebo. Wikipedia it! Groups of people have been convinced that they are tremendously sick, symptoms and all, on account of simply being told they were by an authority, seeing other people sick, and being potentially exposed.
Anyway. Perhaps I've been had all this time. With regard to 'lesser' illnesses like colds, light insomnea, mild depression, etc. there might be a great deal of merit to the stance of blissful ignorance and gullibility! And I mean this not in an insulting way, because such 'ignorance' opens up one to a plethora of real cures whose only difference between themselves, and those of the scientific sort, is the necessary pre-condition of your unquestioning faith.
Ah yes, faith. One might be tempted to note that the fantastic capabilities of the brain to convince itself and the body of just about anything have led to much of what constitutes humanity in its spiritual richness today. I don't hasten to believe that a person is telling the truth when he claims to be convinced he's been abducted by aliens, or has felt the touch of God. Perhaps religious belief on the whole could be amounted to a massive placebo effect that God the sugar pill, the fake medication, has had on human beings.
But if such a characterization is true, then what is the illness requiring a cure?
Look everywhere.
It is, however too late for me, because I know full well that a rock is just a rock. You too now. It's a shame you had to read my blog.
A placebo is a sugar pill. It has in itself no medicinal properties that a teaspoon of sugar doesn't have (namely, none). Control groups in scientific experiments are often given placebos as a way for the researchers to help gauge the effectiveness of the real medication being tested.
Interestingly, there is a very strong effect on placebo-takers much of the time, particularly with anti-depressant medication. That is, the sugar pill-takers actually get better more often than the third control group, consisting of people who are taking no pills at all. What's more, there are apparently documented cases of positive placebo effects on even physiological illnesses, even tumors in some cases.
Life is full of placebo effects. If we are convinced that some object or activity will assist us with some ailment, it likely will do so, merely on account of our believing it will. To use an example from a friend (a reader here as well): she received an amethyst (a kind of purple crystal) as a gift to help her with sleep troubles. It was said at the purveyor (ie. crystal healing shop) that the amethyst has special powers such that if you put it under your pillow at night it will help you sleep better.
They're half right. As a skeptical type, I want to pull my hair out when people tell me how effective such 'cures' can be, but I am humbled by the fact that there is a genuine working element to the process. It isn't so much the stone, as the belief, that helps to cure. And though I want to say it is bunk on account of the stone being neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for better sleep, I also must admit that given the belief, the particular stone does become a sufficient condition for better sleep!
It is infuriating. Entire industries have thrived on this phenomenon. And, if I'm to thrust the point particularly hard, I'd note that because of such industries people have probably died when real medical attention was the proper route, rather than some sort of pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo. After all, as much as the body does have its own healing powers, and as much as willpower and belief can potentially suppliment the body, no body has ever sent AIDS into remission with a placebo, or regrown a leg, or demolished advanced malignant lung cancer.
You might say that mass hysteria is the opposite of the placebo. Wikipedia it! Groups of people have been convinced that they are tremendously sick, symptoms and all, on account of simply being told they were by an authority, seeing other people sick, and being potentially exposed.
Anyway. Perhaps I've been had all this time. With regard to 'lesser' illnesses like colds, light insomnea, mild depression, etc. there might be a great deal of merit to the stance of blissful ignorance and gullibility! And I mean this not in an insulting way, because such 'ignorance' opens up one to a plethora of real cures whose only difference between themselves, and those of the scientific sort, is the necessary pre-condition of your unquestioning faith.
Ah yes, faith. One might be tempted to note that the fantastic capabilities of the brain to convince itself and the body of just about anything have led to much of what constitutes humanity in its spiritual richness today. I don't hasten to believe that a person is telling the truth when he claims to be convinced he's been abducted by aliens, or has felt the touch of God. Perhaps religious belief on the whole could be amounted to a massive placebo effect that God the sugar pill, the fake medication, has had on human beings.
But if such a characterization is true, then what is the illness requiring a cure?
Look everywhere.
It is, however too late for me, because I know full well that a rock is just a rock. You too now. It's a shame you had to read my blog.
Comments