The biological power of the placebo effect.
The power of placebos to ameliorate symptoms has been with us for
centuries. Western medicine today is finding it increasingly difficult
to ignore the efficacy of placebos. In some clinical trials with
placebos as controls, inert or sham replicas of active pharmaceutical
drugs and even sham surgeries have been found to be as beneficial as the
intervention being tested. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential
Knowledge series, Kathryn Hall examines the power of placebos, showing
how their effects can influence our clinical trials, clinical encounters
and, collectively, Hall argues, our public health.
Hall, who has studied the placebo effect for years, reviews the history
of the placebo in medicine, tracing its evolution from quackery and
patent medicine to its use as a control in clinical trials. She
considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to
placebos; advances in neuroimaging that reveal the inner workings of the
placebo effect; the "nocebo" effect; placebo controls in randomized
clinical trials; and the use of psychological profiles and genetics to
predict individual placebo response. The effects of placebos have been
hiding in plain sight; with this book, Hall helps bring them into
clearer view.
