Placebo

[Grislygherkin]

I understand how powerful the placebo effect is. I am always hearing people exclaiming: "Oh, it's a placebo effect!" Research has shown how frequently the placebo effects helps people. Why, then, is the NHS not utilising its benefits and saving millions of pounds?This really perplexes me.

[Matt]

I understand how powerful the placebo effect is. I am always hearing people exclaiming: "Oh, it's a placebo effect!" Research has shown how frequently the placebo effects helps people. Why, then, is the NHS not utilising its benefits and saving millions of pounds?This really perplexes me.

A major obstacle is because it typically involves lying and denying treatment. Medical lawsuits are big. However as you will see from the NHS homepathic hospital in Kent, placebo therapy in the NHS is not alltogether absent.

However I feel that placebo therapy is far more effective if you have to pay for it so I feel that the homepathic hospitals should concetrate on private practice.

There was an interesting article in new scientist about the moral an ethical minefield of prescribing placebos a few months ago. I shall make a half arsed effort to dig it out. O0

[Mojo]

Remember also that the placebo effect operates just as much with effective treatments as it does with ineffective ones.

[Mojo]

However I feel that placebo therapy is far more effective if you have to pay for it so I feel that the homepathic hospitals should concetrate on private practice.


Now we could really do with a properly conducted trial that proves this.

[Grislygherkin]

A little nitpick here! I have always understood that homoeopathy is the correct spelling as the word stems from homo (same). However, in recent years, I've seen the spelling homeopathy - even from homoeopaths themselves. Evolution of the language, I suppose ....

[Cuddles]

I understand how powerful the placebo effect is. I am always hearing people exclaiming: "Oh, it's a placebo effect!" Research has shown how frequently the placebo effects helps people. Why, then, is the NHS not utilising its benefits and saving millions of pounds?This really perplexes me.

The placebo effect does not help people. The placebo effect refers specifically to the improvement in how people say they feel when given a treatment. More generally, it is usually used to refer to any changes in that occur in both the active and control group in a trial. This more general effect also includes things such as spontaneous recovery and regression to the mean, as well as the "true" placebo effect.

It is important to remember that there is no physical effect. If you have a cold and are given a placebo you will not actually recover any faster, although you might feel better the infection will be exactly the same. While there is some argument that this is still a good thing there are ethical problems involved. However, when you look at more serious conditions, the placebo effect is not good at all. Say you have pneumonia and have a choice of antibiotics or a placebo. Take the antibiotics and you will probably recover, take the placebo and you might feel better for a bit, but then you will die.

Placebo is only of any use with self-limiting conditions. This is great for sCAM because the various over-the-counter herbal and homeopathic remedies are usually for these, and there therefore appears to be some effect. On illnesses that actually need treatment the placbo effect is at best useless and at worst can hide the fact that the illness is progressing.

[Jocky]

A little nitpick here! I have always understood that homoeopathy is the correct spelling as the word stems from homo (same). However, in recent years, I've seen the spelling homeopathy - even from homoeopaths themselves. Evolution of the language, I suppose ....

Welcome to UKS, Grislygherkin. I hope that the posts above go some way to explaining why spending public money on placebo treatments is not be as good an idea as it might seem on casual inspection.

I had a similar conversation with a doctor recently, who came out with the same sort of thoughts about placebo treatemnts (in the context of homeopathy, as it happens). When she stopped to think about it though, she realised that it was fallacious.

BTW, I think you're right about the spelling of the name - it's just evolved. "Homeopathy" is accepted as a equally correct spelling. The "oe" is a dipthong, and them things seem to be an endangered species in English these days.

[Woodchopper]

I understand how powerful the placebo effect is. I am always hearing people exclaiming: "Oh, it's a placebo effect!" Research has shown how frequently the placebo effects helps people. Why, then, is the NHS not utilising its benefits and saving millions of pounds?This really perplexes me.

The Placibo effect also covers bias by the doctor or the CAM therapist. They might (unconsciously) interpret someone's symptoms as having got better just because they like to feel that they have been the agent for change. That accounts for all the people who claim the Homeopathy works on their pets.

More importantly, doctors do use the placibo effect. They have offices full of books and certificates on the wall, wear white coats, have fancy titles, write prescriptions that have to be taken to other offices, use language most of us don't understand. All of these help to create an aura of authority. (And I'm not saying that thats the only reason for all of those). People feel that they have been attended to by someone that knows their stuff. I think that the process of a medical consultation may well help to make people feel that they are being healed. That's why sCAM artists surround themselves with a lot of psuedoscientific mumbo jumbo. They want to cash in on the same effect. The difference is of course that the doctor has earnt their authority through study and reliance upon proven methods and evidence (well at least most of the time).

Also, in addition to handing out drugs etc, a lot of tims doctors give out advice. People follow it because the doctor has authority. There's a few times I haven't taken time off work until the doctor told me to. I was just as ill the day before. But it took the authority of the guy in the white coat to get me to change my behaviour.