Placebo Use Common

http://www.kcra.com/tu/5uzHAGvq4.html
Take Two Placebos, Call Me, Docs Say
Internists Vary On What They Tell Patients
Forty-five percent of doctors say they have used a treatment not known to have any real effect, according to a new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Researchers from the University of Chicago sent surveys to 466 internists at facilities in Chicago, and half of them responded.
"Placebos have been used in medicine since ancient times, and remain both clinically relevant and philosophically interesting," said Rachel Sherman, a fourth-year medical student who co-authored the study. "In addition to their recognized use as controls in clinical trials, this study suggests that placebos themselves are viewed as therapeutic tools in medical practice."
Thirty-four percent of the doctors said they told patients the treatments may help and would not hurt. Nineteen percent called it a medicine and 9 percent said it was medicine with no specific effect.
Only 4 percent told patients they were being given a placebo.
In addition, 33 percent of the physicians reported they gave other information to patients, including, "this may help you but I am not sure how it works."
Only 12 percent of respondents said that placebo use should be categorically prohibited.
The physicians most commonly defined a placebo as an intervention not expected to have an effect through a known or specific physiologic mechanism. Researchers then asked physicians about the possible benefits of other treatment and factors that may influence health according to this definition of a placebo.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting.

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Interestingly, when placebos are given to CFS patients, there is no "placebo effect".  One of the theories is that we have been lied to by doctors so often that we no longer trust their assurances that "this will help you."

The placebo effect relies on the patient believing that the pills will work, and CFS patients no longer believe that until the pills have proven themselves.  I can't begin to count how many pills I've been given that either did nothing or made me even worse.

I participated in a clinical trial of experimental sleeping pills.  We were told that at some point during the study, everyone would be on placebo.  The doctor told me that some of the patients slept decently even when they were on placebo.  Me, I knew the very first night of a new pack of pills whether these were the real thing or placebo -- if it was the placebo, I went right back to tossing and turning till 5 AM, but if it was the real thing, I'd be asleep within 15 minutes.  Clearly, some of the patients had placebo effect, but I didn't.

According to one CFS expert, that's how to prove that CFS has no psychological basis whatsoever; if even some of it were psychological, patients would feel better from the placebo effect. 

 

Tags: CFS, fibromyalgia, placebo