Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
Wow! The choice is between accepting the indignities of modern medicine, or accepting that childbirth is God's punishment for being a woman. There are no alternatives because you don't believe in them. That sounds like pretty fucked-up thinking.
I don't understand what you're saying, much less how it relates to what I was saying.
IIRC you were the one carrying on about childbirth being "punishment for Eve's transgression"
We all know about your obsession against homeopathy. Even if homeopathic medicines turn out to be inert placebos, placebos still have a level of effectiveness that exceeds doing nothing. It is far too easy to dismiss the powers of the mind in our attempts to build a purely rationalistic model of medical practice.
Your wording is interesting. You say that even if homeopathic medicines *turn out to be* inert placebos etc. Accordingly you seem to acknowledge a possible state of existence where homeopathy has been categorically proven not to work. From my point of view this has already happened. What would it take for you to be convinced that we have entered this state? What test would be conclusive enough for you?
Achnowledging a possible state where homeopathy might not work is different the inflexible POV that it has already happened. Your, "What would it take for you to be convinced that..." attitude suggests inflexibility. There can be no consensus if you prejudge the result.
As far as the placebo effect is concerned it is well known to modern medical science, though it is inherently somewhat difficult to study. It is by no means dismissed by the rationalistic model of medical practice. Here's the summary of a recent article:
"The placebo effect is well known, but there are many misconceptions. One of these misconceptions is that one-third of patients respond to placebos. This misunderstanding is probably due to methodologically poor research conducted in the 1950s. Another error is that the effect in the placebo arm of a clinical trial is often confused with the placebo effect. The belief in the placebo effect is enormous, but the quantity and quality of data to substantiate this belief are very limited. Investigating the placebo effect is methodologically difficult, not easy to get financed and considered unrewarding." (http://tinyurl.com/7abcq)
Your link redirects me to an nih site on nucleic acids and the word "placebo" does not appear there at all.
I certainly can neither deny nor confirm that there is a one-third response to placebos; my best guess would be that the rate would vary with the medical condition involved. Without a belief in the placebo effect referring to it in clinical trials would be meaningless. We would do just as well comparing the medicine being tested with doing nothing at all, or with a medicine that has an established track record.
I certainly don't doubt that investigating the placebo effect would be difficult and expensive. "Unrewarding" suggests that whatever tests are undertaken would not result in big financial rewards to the pharmaceutical industry; they are not in the business of funding pure science. If the data on the placebo effect is of such poor quality it does not strike me as scientific to novertheless use it as a reference standard.
How does the "effect in the placebo arm" differ from the "placebo effect"?
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