Does anyone know of any studies that could shed light on this matter? We’ve probably all heard those “medical miracle” stories where a patient is spontaneously cured of cancer and so on. What’s the greatest observed improvement brought on by a placebo?
It seems to we should be exploiting this phenomenon for all it’s worth. Or are we already doing so?
To exloit the phenomenon often means using something less effective than actual drugs - for a drug to be approved, it has to be more effective than a placebo. Presumably the placebo effect is present in addition to whatever medical benefit the drug has.
But if you are looking for instances where the placebo effect is widespread, look into studies of antidepressants.
The placebo effect is due to two things. First, let’s say you have a condition that’s not measurable, like depression. We give you a drug (or a placebo, we don’t know), and ask you if you feel better. Just because you expect that maybe you do, the scores tend to be higher. You may pay more attention and notice those times more that you’re not depressed, instead of focusing on the depressed times, even though you actually felt depressed the same amount, the times that you recall are biased differently. That’s one aspect of the placebo effect.
The other aspect is with diseases that are affected by your mental state, again such as depression. If taking a new drug causes you to have a more positive attitude, you’re not likely to get depressed as easily.
But the placebo effect can’t cure cancer, or any other thing that can be objectively observed. Sure some people with cancer have it so away spontaneously, but cancer can just be wierd.
So what exactly can the placebo effect do?
Since it mainly concerns your mental state, can it do things like block out pain? Could we be giving more sugar pills and less morphine?
I understand that the placebo effect can’t actually cure a disease, but can it alleviate the symptoms? Say I have a bad cold and you give me a “cold pill” placebo. Would it help things like a runny nose and an increased body temperature? Or would I just feel better in spite of these things?
To sum up:
If I gave Mr. 
a placebo, would he regain his color or would he just turn into 
?
Basically, that’s exactly what it is all about: it concerns your mental state.
So it can block out pain for sure (and that alone can have a healing effect), but since the immune system and the mind are intertwined (in ways we do not yet fully understand), a different mindset by itself may have boosting effects on the healing process.
If it couldn’t “cure cancer, or any other thing that can be objectively observed.” then there wouldn’t be any need to spend extra money on double-blind trials for those conditions! The mind has a powerful effect on the body for good or for bad.
The problem is that the placebo effect will not be universal. In some people, the placebo effect could be negative - A person feels worse taking the placebo than he/she would have if they didn’t take anything. In others, the effect is neutral - as you would expect from a purely scientific viewpoint. Finally, in others the effect is positive. And all of these effects can come from the same trial!!
So, universally giving out placebos instead of some medication because some people had a positive experience does not make sense.
That said, it is incredible what some people on placebos report. Some people have semi-miraculous recovers based upon the belief that they sugar pill that they are taking is some magic cure. The power of the mind to heal is truly amazing.
As a slight hijack, is it moral to give a person a placebo to “cure” a terminal illness, in order to give them some hope? You often see people go to quack therapies in the faint hope that it can somehow help their condition. They are basically throwing their money away, but who are we to say that they should be robbed of this hope because the treatment that they are recieving has been proven to be worthless?
I agree that giving out known placebos instead of proven medication (proven in the sense of properly conducted trials that show statistically significant positive benefit) makes no sense. However, placebos are still necessary to demonstrate that an unproven medication (or herbal remedy) really does make a difference.
As a slight aside, I’m an atheist that strongly believes that prayer works for many people. That’s not contradictory, simply a statement of how much I respect the placebo effect; placebos don’t need to be something you can hold in your hand!
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but double-blind studies have NOTHING to do with studying the placebo. They are for studying the ACTIVE. Don’t confuse the placebo with the placebo effect.
The point of a double blind study is to give X amount of patients a pill which may or may not contain the active ingredient. No one, not even the doctors making the measurements, knows who has the active and who has the placebo during this study (code numbers are assigned, and examined ONLY once the study is completed to compare testing results to placbo and active). Since both the doctors and the patients know that the patients each have a 50/50 chance of having an active dose, the “placebo effect” is pretty much assumed to be the same in both groups, and so any objective and subjective results are assumed to be corrected by this. The point of the double blind side of it - the doctors not knowing - is so that the doctors cannot treat patients with the active differently than those on placebo, since that would bias the results.
Since the placebo effect is therefore essentially nil, any additional differences (improvement, or worsening) between the active and the placebo groups can therefore be attributed to the one and only difference between them - the active drug. If there is statistically significant improvement in a condition in enough studies, then the active ingredient is maintained as a drug for the medical condition under investigation. If the difference is not statistically significant in multiple studies, then the compound goes down the drain.
Again, maybe I misunderstood your post, but the distinction is important.
I think you did misunderstand me a bit, and I can assure you I know all about double-blind tests. The fact that double-blind tests are necessary is because a placebo effect is so common (even in conditions where you wouldn’t think a placebo would have any hope of working). If placebo effects didn’t exist then you could assume that if more people got better with “treatment” than with nothing at all then the “treatment” actually did something pharmacologically.
So, in a manner of speaking, a double-blind test does study a placebo as well as the treatment of concern - two things are being studied to see which is better (and one hopes it is the treatment being investigated).
In some cases the “placebo” isn’t really a placebo, when you are comparing a new treatment with a current treatment, but the principle still applies.
My apologies for the misunderstanding! Of course the point of the double-blind study is to NEGATE the placebo effect, because it is a real effect that needs to be considered.
I know what you mean, you know what I mean.
Oi! Words!