4 ms·

What make you think that the placebo effect is not "valid"?

• necubi 17y ago
  The placebo effect exists, but it exists independently of whatever expensive alt-medicine crap is being pushed at the moment. Therefore, if we're discussing the efficacy of the "medicine," you can't include placebo effects. This is also why medical trials nearly always include a placebo group.
  • est 17y ago
    OK, this is a dumb question, what makes 'western' medicine not a placebo?
• yason 17y ago
  I've long known that in the end, it's the human itself who will heal himself from any illness; not medical doctors, alternative healers, or a particular kind of medicine. People who don't want to heal simply will not, or at least they'll create a suitable series of different subsequent illnesses. Those who want will heal, possibly through whatever particular enabler they might initially need or simply on their own. There are only few studies of healing miracles, possibly because we really haven't figured out yet why some terminally ill cancer patient with only months left suddenly rids himself of all cancer cells over a mere week. However, I've now come to the conclusion that it works both ways: the human being can also make himself very sick, up to the level of being dead. This has shifted my focus from healing and curing illnesses -- i.e. fixing the aftermath -- to looking for the answer from the question of why do we get ill in the first place? Why some people almost never get sick? Why some are chronically sick with several illnesses at any given moment? Why these tendencies sometimes change? Why is it that people's lives seem to change in sync with getting chronic illnesses and healing from them? The validity of the placebo effect kind of fits in logically if we first assume the foremost responsibility of one being healthy or sick to the person himself.