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Article: How Real Is The Placebo Effect?(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- June 18, 2001
- Author:
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The medical establishment has long held that a substance can have a medicinal effect simply because a patient believes it will. The conventional wisdom about this placebo effect, which harks back to a paper published in 1955, has been that it works for one patient in three. That's not a bad ratio, especially for a treatment that has no side effects. Some doctors have even proposed using the placebo effect as a bona fide medical treatment. But many doctors are uncomfortable with the easygoing notion that mere belief can heal the body. Late last month a paper in the journal Science gave them some ammunition, suggesting that the power of placebo is a myth.
The study ...