Comments on: Placebo is not what you think

By: Sadun Kal

Sadun Kal — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:36:06 +0000

I think promoting Placebo treatment is slightly silly:
It means that you acknowledge psychology’s role but instead of teaching the patient to control their own psychology (via self brainwashing-hypnosis courses for example), you treat them like sheep and try to do their job for them.
It’s not just deceving the patient, the doctors are also deceiving themselves by convincing themselves that they did the best for the patient while they could have done better by informing the patient about what THEY can do.
I still support the prescription of placebos though…better than prescribing something harmful. I just think that it’s not the perfect solution.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:00:48 +0000

Thanks for the information on placebos. Whoever thought up selling placebos to kids? I wonder if people will even bother to buy it.
We recently wrote an article on placebos at Brain Blogger. A recent survey of more than 200 doctors that practice in academic medical centers, showed that 45% of them had given placebos to patients while providing clinical care. Is this right though? Is giving a pateint a placebo a form of betrayal?
We would like to read your comments on our article. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kelly

By: Ines

Ines — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:41:52 +0000

The JRSM article on placebo by Miller & Kaptchuk is openly accessible via this link: http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/101/5/222