June 22, 2008

The meaning effect

Just discovered (via Neuroanthropology) a fascinating paper on the so called placebo effect.

Early on the the authors, Daniel E. Moerman, PhD, and Wayne B. Jonas, MD, assert:

"The one thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that placebos do not cause placebo effects. Placebos are inert and don’t cause anything."

They then go on to argue, with a number of examples, that it would be more fruitful to look at the so called placebo effect in terms of what a treatment means to patients and how that impacts on their recovery, both positively and negatively - the meaning effect.

And conclude:

"... as we have clarified, routinized, and rationalized our medicine, thereby relying on the salicylates and forgetting about the more meaningful birches, willows, and wintergreen from which they came —in essence, stripping away Plato’s “charms”—we have impoverished the meaning of our medicine to a degree that it simply doesn’t work as well as it might any more. Interesting ideas such as this are impossible to entertain when we discuss placebos; they spring readily to mind when we talk about meaning."

(Do scroll down and read Dan Moerman's comments on the Neuroanthropology post - much to reflect on here)

Posted by richard at June 22, 2008 12:51 PM
Comments

Yes, this is something Alex and I talk about a lot. It's not just the "naturalness" of things like willow (whatever that means - are we talking about trace elements only?). It's much more the meaning and associations - which of course used to be very powerful.

I've been reading Culpepper's recently and of course a lot of it is laughable by modern medical standards (all that wet, cool, warm etc humors stuff) but some of it does make you pause and wonder.

Posted by: karen at June 23, 2008 08:38 PM
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