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Article: The Placebo Effect and Alternative Therapies.
- Article from:
- Alternative Medicine Alert
- Article date:
- June 1, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Placebo Effect and Alternative Therapies
By Donal P. OMathuna, PhD
When patients report improvements with a unique therapy that has little scientific support and possibly no known physiological basis, some immediately assume the benefits are explained by the placebo effect. Alternative medicine includes therapies and remedies that are sometimes poorly understood, leading some to wonder if alternative therapists have learned to make the most of the placebo effect..sup.1 Such interest led the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to sponsor a workshop on the placebo effect that received widespread recognition from many conventional ...