Placebos: Can a Sugar Pill Cure? :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Placebos Can a Sugar Pill Cure?Placebo the word is Latin for I will please. Originally it started the Vespers for the dead, often birdsong by hired mourners, and eventually to sing placebos came to mean to flatter or placate (1). Later, the term was used for any kind of quack medicinal drug. Today, it is a medicine that has no value in itself, but improves a patients condition because the patient believes it to be potent. Belief in a swallowed sugar pill or saline injection has been suggestn to produce real reactions. 80% of patients given sugar water and told it is an emetic respond by vomiting (1). People often show an hypersensitive response to something they believe they are allergic to, even if it is only p destructionic flowers. Doesthis strong reaction hold true for more serious medical conditions, so? There are three explanations as to why placebos may work. The first, called the opoid model, says that the positive response is a result of endorphins released in response t o swallowing a pill, etc. The indorse is the conditioning model, which holds that the important factor is not the medicine, but contact with a medical professional. Because patients are used to getting better after they go into a doctors office and talk to someone in a white coat, they are psychologically conditioned to get better after contact with the medical environment. The last is the expectancy model, in which patients improve because they expect the placebo to have a certain effect. There are even more arguments, though, as to how the placebo effect has been exaggerated or fabricated. Some studies include additional intervention along with the medication, sosimply being in a study may produce results (1). Some studies on placebos often show similar rates of success for a drug and a placebo, but do not include a control in which no treatment is used. In such studies, it is impossible to tell what improvement was actually due to the placebo and what would have happened anyway (3). Patients may also tend to report improvement because they weigh this is what is expected. This is especially true with poorly designed response forms with more options for improvement than worsening. Many illnesses, like colds, improve by themselves given time. Others, like depression and inveterate pain, fluctuate. Thus improvement in these types of illness might well have happened without any medicine or placebo.