Info on placebo effects:
http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html
A placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered.
The idea of the placebo in modern times originated with H. K. Beecher. He evaluated 15 clinical trials concerned with different diseases and found that 35% of 1,082 patients were satisfactorily relieved by a placebo alone ("The Powerful Placebo," 1955). Other studies have since calculated the placebo effect as being even greater than Beecher claimed. For example, studies have shown that placebos are effective in 50 or 60 percent of subjects with certain conditions, e.g., "pain, depression, some heart ailments, gastric ulcers and other stomach complaints."
****Although the evidence on the existence of placebo effects might appear compelling, there are also medical articles questioning the statistical methods of those who argue have found placebo effects in small studies. This is one example:
"Is the Placebo Powerless? An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment" by Danish researchers Asbjørn Hróbjartsson and Peter C. Götzsche
This article "found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects." This meta-analysis of 114 studies found that "compared with no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, regardless of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective. For the trials with continuous outcomes, placebo had a beneficial effect, but the effect decreased with increasing sample size, indicating a possible bias related to the effects of small trials." (Most of the studies evaluated by Hróbjartsson and Götzsche were small: for 82 of the studies the median size was 27 and for the other 32 studies the median was 51.)
"The high levels of placebo effect which have been repeatedly reported in many articles, in our mind are the result of flawed research methodology," said Dr. Hróbjartsson, professor of medical philosophy and research methodology at the University of Copenhagen.*
Rox
Diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis in December 2008. Inflammatory demyelination of the spinal cord (c3-c5). No MS, but still CCSVI.
