Bird’s Eye: Placebos are working better than ever. As a recent study shows, they have a significantly higher cure rate for IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) than doing nothing, even when people know they’re taking placebos. Meanwhile homeopathy has been banned for animals, because it doesn’t work (the animals don’t know it’s supposed to, stupid animals.) But though they are exactly as good as placebos, people can still take them, which some doctors question.
It is amazing what can happen when IBS patients are taken seriously by medical providers. A novel study on the power of placebo suggests that IBS symptoms can improve even when patients are told they are receiving a placebo treatment. The study design utilized 80 IBS patients assigned to one of two treatment groups: those who were clearly told they were receiving a placebo pill and those who received no treatment. Patients were recruited to the study through advertisements for a “novel mind-body management study of IBS”. All patients were educated as to the positive benefits of placebo on the body. Participants filled out symptom questionnaires at the start of the study, day 11, and at the conclusion of the study, which occurred three weeks after the start.
Both groups experienced symptom improvement, but the placebo group as compared to the no-treatment group experienced significantly higher global symptom improvement, reduced symptom severity, and were more likely to report adequate symptom relief.
* Is Homeopathy On The Ropes After Vets’ Ruling? Dr Evan Harris The Guardian
In December the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) in the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – which governs the use of medicines in animals – made clear that homeopathic treatments could only be classed as medicines, and thus prescribed by vets, if they were able to demonstrate efficacy.
Homeopathic products cannot demonstrate efficacy to any satisfactory degree and so this means that they can’t be used by vets to treat animals. The use of homeopathy to treat animals – “there’s no placebo effect in animals, is there, so it must work” the homeopaths claim – has long been a mainstay of the homeopathy industry’s argument. The logic of the VMD’s decision is unquestionable. If it doesn’t have efficacy, it can’t be a medicine. And, ethically, if a medicine doesn’t work then a sick animal deserves to have real treatment not sham treatment.
* No to homeopathy placebo Edzard Ernst The Guardian
The acid test, I thought, was whether homeopathic remedies behave differently from placebos when submitted to clinical trials. So we conducted several trials and published many summaries of the studies done worldwide. The results were sobering. Today there are about 200 clinical trials and the totality of this evidence fails to show that homeopathic remedies work. But what about patients’ experience? What about my own experience as a patient and later as a clinician? In fact, tonnes of data shows that people get better after seeing a homeopath. This is why homeopaths are adamant that their treatments work. Can this wealth of experience be overruled by scientific evidence?
When one begins to analyse this contradiction rationally it very quickly dissolves into thin air. The empathic encounter with a homeopath, the expectation of the patient, the natural history of the disease and many other factors all provide ample explanation for the fact that patients can improve even when they receive placebos.
