The nation’s drug-makers have spent billions of advertising dollars selling consumers on the idea that there’s a drug for everything that ails us. Turns out, they’ve found one: the placebo. For some reason, the placebo effect has gotten significantly stronger in American drug trials. In fact, unexpectedly strong placebo performance has sunk several high-profile drug tests. It’s got the pharmaceutical industry worried enough to fund a major study to identify the factors in rising placebo potency. Drug companies could be victims of their own success in this instance: we’ve become so convinced of the power of modern medicine, it works even when we’re off the pill. [%comments]
The Strangely Powerful Placebo
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Maybe the placebo effect works better now because more people have b.s. psychosomatic symptoms in the first place.
Fake cures for fake ailments! Sounds like we should be looking for better diagnostic tools, to be sure there’s really something there to cure.
It’s not surprising placebos have gotten more effective as pharmaceutical marketing ramps up. Convince a healthy person that they’re sick, and it’s easier to convince them that they’re well again.
I’ve often wondered about how I could use the placebo effect for benefit. I considered mixing in sugar pills with my regular drugs, so that I wouldn’t know which one I was taking on any given day, but AFAIK, placebos that look identical to certain drugs are not available at the consumer level.
The whole alternative medicine juggernaut is based on the placebo effect. They make something like 5 trillion dollars a year!
I don’t think a placebo is a good response to hypochondria. Better than giving real drugs, but you aren’t really treating the problem.
Keep big government away from my fake medicine!
Placebos often work better than prescribed drugs (Prozac? Works as well as a placebo. But costs a lot more.) A whole lot of Western medicine also appears to be based on the placebo effect too.
Your mind is absolutely what will get you sick, and get you well. If you can convince yourself that your cholesterol is getting lower, it will. Your body will attempt to follow the instructions you give it. Just tell yourself that you are “well enough, and healthy enough, and gosh darn it, people like you.” (with apologies to Stuart Smalley/Al Franken)/
A possible reason for the increase in the placebo effect is the increasing quality of research design. Over the past several years, in scientific research, there have been significant movements concerning research quality. Editors of peer-reviewed journals expect a certain set of aspects to be reported, and so researchers increasingly have to comply in order to get published. Consort standards (“Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials”) would be the most obvious example. Grant funding has also sought improved study design, as have institutional review boards. With an increase in the quality of a study design, lowered portions of chance/random effects and placebo effects get attributed to the intervention of interest.