There is little doubt that the placebo effect is real, but it has always been argued that a person feels better because they think the pill is the real deal. But what if it works even when you know it鈥檚 a fake?
According to at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues at least one condition can be calmed by placebo, even when everyone knows it鈥檚 just an inert pill. This raises a thorny question: should we start offering sugar pills for ailments without a treatment?
In the latest study, Kaptchuk tested the effect of placebo versus no treatment in 80 people with irritable bowel syndrome. Twice a day, 37 people swallowed an inert pill could not be absorbed by the body. The researchers told participants that it could improve symptoms through the placebo effect.
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While 35 per cent of the patients who had not received any treatment reported an improvement, 59 per cent of the placebo group felt better. 鈥淭he placebo was almost twice as effective as the control,鈥� says Kaptchuk. 鈥淭hat would be a great result if it was seen in a normal clinical trial of a drug.鈥�
, professor of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, UK, thinks that 鈥渢he size of the benefit is too small to be clinically relevant鈥�. Kaptchuk agrees and wants to run some larger trials to get a better picture of the effect.
If a dummy pill can improve IBS, shouldn鈥檛 we be exploring its effect on other ailments? 鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 work on a tumour or kill microbes, but it鈥檚 likely to affect illnesses where self-appraisal is important, such as depression鈥� says Kaptchuk.
A 2008 study found that around a third of physicians had . 鈥淣ow we have shown that there are ethical ways of harnessing the placebo effect,鈥� says Kaptchuk.
Surely now you can make a case for using a placebo when there are no other treatment options? Kaptchuk feels there is still an ethical dilemma here. 鈥淚鈥檓 against giving patients something unless it鈥檚 been shown to work in that condition,鈥� he says, though the individuals concerned may feel differently.
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