Tag Archives: Placebo Effect

Obecalp Controversy

What a difference a mention in the NY Times makes! There’s been an incredible amount of web traffic generated by a website advertising ‘Obecalp‘ (‘placebo backwards), including a very lively debate at one of our favourite sites, Boingboing

In the Boingboing exchanges, most people are objecting to (a) enculturating kids into pill-popping behaviours, and (b) deceiving kids about the actual nature of the pill. Nobody’s gainsaying the operation of the so-called placebo effect, it seems to be more about the parenting issues …

I guess the same objections would be raised to behaviour like putting a Flintstones-themed band-aid on a bumped knee that didn’t actually need a band-aid, with the assurance that this would ‘make it better’…?

Two things, in defence of the placebo-as-pill approach (and astute readers will be aware that the placebo effect can also be engaged through sham injections, sham surgery … and possibly Mystical Words Uttered Backwards Under a Full Moon and so forth …

As conscious purveyors of placebos, we’re concerned with the potential of the placebo effect to inspire self-healing. We don’t recommend that people lie about or misrepresent our product: it’s a sugar pill, inert, side-effect free … BUT the placebo effect exists, and there is some evidence to show that people ingesting a placebo *in the awareness that it’s a placebo* may still gain some benefit. That’s the ‘honesty in parenting’ bit.

As to the pill-popping-culture bit, well … perhaps. One of our team is a homeopath, and consequently aware of the materialist critique that homeopathic remedies are also nothing else but placebos. In general, our feeling is ‘so what? If there’s no deception and misrepresentation, and the things actually work, what’s the harm?’

We understand the passion and the aggro, to an extent. Nobody likes the idea of ripping people off and leveraging the pain of children. But we can assure you there’s a case to be made for harmless and light-hearted exploration of the placebo effect, and especially for the questions it raises about the same pill-popping culture that encourages conventional practitioners to regularly use ineffective treatments (such as prescribing antibiotics for viral infections).

I had this great thing happen . . .

I had this great thing happen just after I got back after new year. I wasn’t offered a further contract at the college and so had to leave on the 18th January. I was so upset and it brought up all insecurities like not good enough or I have failed again . . . and I was in this flat in the city with no money coming in!

I got home in tears and had got off the phone from a friend after bewailing my fate ( gremlins going nuts inside) and I picked up the Placebo…I said to myself, “This is stupid, I cannot and will not go down again, I have to succeed” as I popped a pill.

You have no idea, well of course you have, but I suddenly I went into a total calm state and lay on the sofa and fell into a deep sleep. I woke renewed cooked a curry and got on with life. Soon after I was offered a new job teaching English to Indian Punjabi young men and women and it’s lovely . . . feel like I’m in India!

So I cannot tell you how incredible the peace and the sleep that descended on me was . . . incredible. I have told my all my friends that I can vouch for Placebo efficacy!I am going to be a great success!

Love to you Jane xxxxxx

 

Placebos and Antidepressants

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Want to know where we get the ‘up to 70% success’ claim in our packaging?

"The placebo response, noted as an early or nonpersistent improvement in response to an inactive agent, represents one of the most significant challenges in central nervous system (CNS) drug development. Despite a wealth of documentation, there is no commonly accepted definition of this phenomenon. However, it is agreed that there has been a significant increase in the placebo response in the last 20 years, particularly in clinical trials with antidepressant medications for major depressive disorder (MDD).

Estimates as high as 70% have been reported for CNS clinical trials. (our italics) Such large placebo rates have a significant impact on the cost and speed of drug development.

Since fewer than half of the depressed patients who receive active medications in psychiatric trials show clinically significant improvement, some critics claim that antidepressants are no better than placebo treatment, and their illusory superiority depends on poorly designed studies and biased clinical evaluations. In a set of six identically designed, three-arm, parallel controlled trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for an antidepressant drug, Leber reported that antidepressants could not be distinguished from placebo in five of the six studies."

Ref. Richard Entsuah, Phil Vinall: Potential Predictors of Placebo Response: Lessons From a Large Database, Drug Information Journal. Ambler: 2007. Vol. 41, Iss. 3; pg. 315, 16 pgs

Placebo Surgery

Amazing placebo experiment with knee surgery – points to the finding that there can be ‘grades’ in the placebo effect – big pills are more effective than small pills, coloured pills more effective than white ones, inert injections more effective than pills, and sham surgery more effective than any of them.
Of course, at Universal Placebos we feel it sufficient to stay with our modest, aesthetically pleasing, small white sugar pills, in doses of three. That’s enough.

What Happens When You KNOW You’re Taking a Placebo?

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One of the rare studies into the action of the placebo effect in ‘non-blind’ clinical trials was undertaken by Lee C. Park and Uno Covi at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1964. ‘Non-blind’ means that patients were informed that the pills they were issued were totally inert, that they were placebos, and in this case they were also assured that despite this the pills would be of benefit to them. The study concluded:’The primary finding is that patients can be willing to take placebo and can improve despite disclosure of the inert content of the pills; belief in pill as drug was not a requirement for improvement.’

(Some first-hand reports on our Testimonials page.)

Ref. L. C. Park, U. Covi, Nonblind Placebo Trial – An Exploration of Neurotic Patients’ Responses to Placebo When Its Inert Content Is Disclosed, Archives of General Psychiatry, April 1965, Vol. 12, pp. 336-345

Placebos and Sinusitis

Placebo As Good As Common Treatments For Sinus Infections

A placebo is likely to be just as effective as common acute sinusitis treatments involving a topical steroid and an antibiotic, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Ian G. Williamson, MD; Kate Rumsby, BA; Sarah Benge, PhD; Michael Moore, FRCGP; Peter W. Smith, PhD; Martine Cross, BA; Paul Little, MD – “Antibiotics and Topical Nasal Steroid for Treatment of Acute Maxillary Sinusitis – A Randomized Controlled Trial”, Journal of the American Medical Association. 2007;298(21):2487-2496.

‘True’ and ‘Perceived’ Placebo Effects

One of the problems scientists have in evaluating the placebo effect is the distinction that can be drawn between ‘true’ and ‘perceived’ placebo effects, where a ‘perceived’ effect might not not be directly attributable to the administration of a placebo. But they also acknowledge the general ignorance of definition and description when it comes to the ‘true’ placebo effect.’A review of the literature shows that most authors confuse the perceived placebo effect with the true placebo effect. The true placebo effect is highly variable, depending on several factors that are not fully understood.’

Ref. E. Ernst, K. L. Resch, Concept of true and perceived placebo effects, British Medical Journal, 1995;311:551-553

Using Placebos in Clinical Practice?

A few – just a few – medical professionals bring up the ethics of therapists actually prescribing placebos as an element of treatment.

Margaret Talbot proposes in the New York Times Magazine (1/09/2000):"The truth is that the placebo effect is huge — anywhere between 35 and 75 percent of patients benefit from taking a dummy pill in studies of new drugs — so huge, in fact, that it should probably be put to conscious use in clinical practice, even if we do not entirely understand how it works."

Others might balk at the suggestion, but there seems to be an ethical shadow-line, where a drug-focused therapy may overlap with the physician’s responsibility (duty?) to care for his or her patient as more than a machine, as a being of heart-mind."The placebo effect can occur," as the physician Herbert Spiegel once put it, "when conditions are optimal for hope, faith, trust and love." It might sound sentimental, but then sentiment, working hand in hand with science, can make medical practice so much more powerful. A world in which placebo — preferably in the form of deft encouragement, but sometimes in the form of a harmless pill — was tolerated, even embraced, would be a world in which doctors never forgot that medical practice consists not only of the technologies of diagnosis and treatment but also of the careful tending of a patient’s expectations and the unabashed willingness to comfort."

Margaret Talbot, The Placebo Prescription, New York Times Magazine

Skeptics Have Two Bob Each Way

Even the skeptics (American English for ‘sceptics’) can’t come down *too* hard on placebos:

"A person’s beliefs and hopes about a treatment, combined with their suggestibility, may have a significant biochemical effect. Sensory experience and thoughts can affect neurochemistry. The body’s neurochemical system affects and is affected by other biochemical systems, including the hormonal and immune systems. Thus, it is consistent with current knowledge that a person’s hopeful attitude and beliefs may be very important to their physical well-being and recovery from injury or illness.
However, it may be that much of the placebo effect is not a matter of mind over molecules, but of mind over behavior. A part of the behavior of a "sick" person is learned. So is part of the behavior of a person in pain. In short, there is a certain amount of role-playing by ill or hurt people. Role-playing is not the same as faking or malingering. The behavior of sick or injured persons is socially and culturally based to some extent. The placebo effect may be a measurement of changed behavior affected by a belief in the treatment. The changed behavior includes a change in attitude, in what one says about how one feels, and how one acts. It may also affect one’s body chemistry.

From The Skeptics Dictionary