If you’re in a car wreck, you need a hospital. If you have cancer, you need medicine. If you have a heart valve problem, you need surgery. We’ve come to rely on Western, allopathic medicine for one major reason… it works. Despite insurance hurdles, pharmaceutical chicanery, or medical malpractice, few of us would trade today’s miraculous medical technology for anything of the past.
But high-tech medicine isn’t the only source of doctors out there… our minds also have power to heal. The Placebo Effect, the ability of the body to heal itself when it thinks it is getting real treatment, has long been known. Scientists continue to study this link between our minds and bodies, and how each influences the other. This month we bring you several articles exploring this subtle yet powerful ability that lies hidden in our own bodies, and what scientists are doing to bring it into the world of the everyday. But beware! Like any technology, the placebo effect has a good side… and a dark side.
The Good side of the force…
The Placebo Effect– Steven Novella in Science-Based Medicine, Jan 16, 2008
The Placebo Effect Is Real. Now Doctors Just Have To Work Out How To Use It– Ben Schiller on Co.Exist, Aug 26, 2013
Is the Placebo Powerless? — An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment– Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche, New England Journal of Medicine, May 24, 2001
How the Placebo Effect Works (with video)– Shanna Freeman on How Stuff Works
The Power of Nothing- Could studying the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?– Michael Specter in The New Yorker, Dec 12, 2011
The Placebo Phenomenon- An ingenious researcher finds the real ingredients of “fake” medicine– Cara Feinberg in Harvard Magazine, Jan-Feb 2013
But beware of the Dark side…
The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills– Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic, Sep 14, 2011
The Contagious Thought That Could Kill You– David Robson on BBC.com, Feb 11, 2015
