Placebo Effect

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 « A Placebo is a substance or treatment with no active therapeutic effect. This psychological phenomenon, in which the recipient perceives an improvement in condition due to personal expectations, rather than the treatment itself, is known as the placebo effect or placebo response »

A PLACEBO ACTUALLY WORKS ON ACTUAL SYMPTOMS

« Doesn’t matter if it’s a placebo, it works for me…»
« If it doesn’t help you, at least it won’t harm you!»
« For children, or for pregnant people, we can use it without fear…»

Among many others, these statements seem to justify maintaining a strange status quo: there is no need for some treatments to scientifically prove their action. This tacit agreement benefits to the many remedies that would have failed to prove their specific efficacy, while ensuring users complete safety. This safety seems enough to allay the uncertainty surrounding the evaluation of their results compared to placebo.

Who would dare to expose a possible therapeutic fraud, risking to deprive their peers of a salvatory resort to the masked placebo? Placebo undeniably induces a well-being, while limiting exposure (sometimes unrequired) to dangerous products, called “chemicals.” For benign affections, it does hold an indisputable interest.

BEFORE

The benefic effect of a pharmacologically neutral product (placebo) was supposed to rest only on the credit a patient would give to its alleged action. Therefore, lying could only be regarded as acceptable, or even…therapeutic!
Case closed: skeptics and detractors were endangering their peers by wanting, at all costs, scientifically evaluate the miraculous drug – the one and only entitled to a complete absence of side effects.

CONSEQUENCE

It is however hard to allow ourselves to use a simple moisturizer on a hematoma, or to give a trivial sugar cube to a child, telling them it’ll help them get better. Parents are held back by the guilt of lying to their offspring, or insulting their intelligence.
It is therefore way more comfortable to dispense an inactive drug, but one that’s sold in a pharmacy, leaving a doubt about the level of proof of its efficacy (uncertainty treasured by caregivers and even patients!). Even if the real effect is questionable in the eyes of all, no one really benefits from contesting it, since its use (and preserving doubt) is useful to the majority.

NOW

This period seems over. It is possible to continue resorting to the benefits from a placebo intervention, without needing to lie (to ourselves) or even feeling guilty to claim the true effect on our body!

The care effect, the psychosomatic effect, or other therapeutic rituals are confirmed as scientific realities that we can keep using, without contributing to the perpetuation of far-fetched pseudo-scientific hypothesis.