From Boston.com, an article on the history and use of placebos in medical care. Says Rebecca Duhos-Dubrow in part:
You’re not likely to hear about this from your doctor, but fake medical treatment can work amazingly well. For a range of ailments, from pain and nausea to depression and Parkinson’s disease, placebos--whether sugar pills, saline injections, or sham surgery--have often produced results that rival those of standard therapies.clinical trials, they won’t get approved by the FDA. Patients who benefit from placebos might understandably wonder if the healing isn’t somehow false, too.
But as evidence of the effect’s power mounts, members of the medical community are increasingly asking an intriguing question: if the placebo effect can help patients, shouldn’t we start putting it to work? In certain ways, placebos are ideal drugs: they typically have no side effects and are essentially free. And in recent years, research has confirmed that they can bring about genuine improvements in a number of conditions. An active conversation is now under way in leading medical journals, as bioethicists and researchers explore how to give people the real benefits of pretend treatment.
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