5 ms·

Western medicine is, IMHO, too averse to exploiting the very real, very powerful, placebo effect. To get a treatment approved you need to prove that it's not a

Western medicine is, IMHO, too averse to exploiting the very real, very powerful, placebo effect. To get a treatment approved you need to prove that it's not a placebo, which excludes, of course... effective placebos. In India, for example, a lot of family doctors don't see their job as curing the disease, but as giving the patient a feeling of agency and control over their lives. Letting them feel like they're doing something. So when a patient comes to them, the feel that their job is to give them a pill, and a pill is what they will get. If they have a treatable condition they'll get a pill that treats the condition, otherwise they'll get a random herbal tincture or similar, something foul-tasting that gives the patient whatever relief the placebo effect can deliver.

pas 7y ago
No, clinical studies work by showing statistically significantly greater efficacy than the placebo (sham treatment) group. Placebo can be anything. Just as the treatment. But it turns out that placebo is basically the measure of how much the patient believes in the treatment. And that correlates with price, attention of staff, length of treatment, etc.
- freepor 7y ago
  I don't understand your comment but realize that I do understand it if I change your opening "no" to "yes."
- mcv 7y ago
  That's exactly the point: new medicines are tested against a placebo rather than against no treatment at all, because the placebo does have an effect: the placebo effect. It is an effect, and it can be leveraged to make people feel better. Is that quackery? Or is that making people feel better?
  - pas 7y ago
    The placebo effect is already exploited day by day in every hospital, clinic and small primary care physician office. The problem is the whole marketing narrative of Big Pharma is bad makes people less susceptible to that placebo effect, because they want more. But instead of paying for simply more time with a real doctor they want something special. People want magic so bad. They already want just one more test to make sure, just a pill to fix it, make it better, to make it go away, to manage it. And sure, who could blame people we know all of this about DNA and virus spike proteins and MRSA and so on, but our treatment options are not fundamentally available at that level. We are still far from being able to whip up a vaccine just from a drop of covalescent blood. Or from just the RNA of a virus. And people are very easy to fool into the narrative that there is something fundamentally different that actually works. Ancient Tibetian knowledge. Energy, chakra healing, whatever. And nobody stops anyone from going to the FDA and showing how better their treatment is than a pill. Or how their treatment plus a pill works wonders. Yet "alternative medicine" doesn't do this. Why? Because they don't want to spend money on that. They like it in the shadows.

pas 7y ago

No, clinical studies work by showing statistically significantly greater efficacy than the placebo (sham treatment) group. Placebo can be anything. Just as the treatment. But it turns out that placebo is basically the measure of how much the patient believes in the treatment. And that correlates with price, attention of staff, length of treatment, etc.

freepor 7y ago
I don't understand your comment but realize that I do understand it if I change your opening "no" to "yes."
mcv 7y ago
That's exactly the point: new medicines are tested against a placebo rather than against no treatment at all, because the placebo does have an effect: the placebo effect. It is an effect, and it can be leveraged to make people feel better. Is that quackery? Or is that making people feel better?
- pas 7y ago
  The placebo effect is already exploited day by day in every hospital, clinic and small primary care physician office. The problem is the whole marketing narrative of Big Pharma is bad makes people less susceptible to that placebo effect, because they want more. But instead of paying for simply more time with a real doctor they want something special. People want magic so bad. They already want just one more test to make sure, just a pill to fix it, make it better, to make it go away, to manage it. And sure, who could blame people we know all of this about DNA and virus spike proteins and MRSA and so on, but our treatment options are not fundamentally available at that level. We are still far from being able to whip up a vaccine just from a drop of covalescent blood. Or from just the RNA of a virus. And people are very easy to fool into the narrative that there is something fundamentally different that actually works. Ancient Tibetian knowledge. Energy, chakra healing, whatever. And nobody stops anyone from going to the FDA and showing how better their treatment is than a pill. Or how their treatment plus a pill works wonders. Yet "alternative medicine" doesn't do this. Why? Because they don't want to spend money on that. They like it in the shadows.