Almost everyone has heard about the placebo effect – the finding that treatment that have no particularly relevant effect (like a sugar or vitamin pill, or a behavioral equivalent) can make patients feel better. The placebo effect is actually the reason that all FDA approved drugs have to go through a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial before being approved for use – It has to be shown that using a specific medication is more beneficial than a non-active placebo even when the experimenter (or doctors) and the patient have no idea which treatment the patients are receiving. Otherwise, companies could simply continuously create placebos, show that they produce improvements in patients, and bring in the dollars.
Until now, it’s been assumed that in order for placebos to work, the patients have to be told that they are effective medications, amounting to an unethical lie by the doctors that prescribe them. This is the reason that very few doctors use pure placebos, though in a recent survey more than 50% of doctors reported using mild prescriptions (like over-the-counter pain medications) that they don’t believe are actually relevant to the condition as “impure placebos.” Given the large placebo effect, we can expect that these treatment, even if unethical, resulted in significant improvements in conditions that those same doctors were unable to treat using conventional methods. Still, it doesn’t feel good to know your doctors have to lie to you to make you feel better, right? Well they might not have to. Continue reading
Psychology In Action 