Canadian Doctors Prescribing Placebo Pills - And They Work!
Dummy drugs can do more than their name suggests. "Placebos have helped alleviate pain, depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory disorders and even cancer," says Scientific American.
Some Canadian doctors are so confident in the effectiveness of placebo pills in treating some illnesses that they are prescribing them to patients without their knowledge. A new study from McGill University found that 20 percent of Canadian physicians hand out placebo pills to patients, and only 17 percent of that group would tell their patients the truth about their therapy. In the study, more than 600 doctors, almost half of which were psychiatrists, were surveyed. Doctors seem to be adopting the practice as an alternative to drugs, despite the fact that giving placebos is currently a professional taboo at best, and a serious violation of ethics and patients' trust at worst.
Whatever the professional and ethical implications, there is an ongoing discussion about the role of placebos in medical treatment. A stunning 2009 article about placebos in Wired brought the issue to the fore again, as research at the time was investigating how placebos encourage the mind to heal the body. That research built on work from half a century ago. A radical 1955 paper titled "The Powerful Placebo," published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that taking a pill, active or not, helped all the patients in the sample group. Surprisingly, even the hue of a pill can affect a patient's health, other research has shown (blue pills are better than red ones for blood pressure and lowering heart rates).
Click Here to Read All
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks