Placebo...Effect or Defect

The placebo effect is mostly known scam made by several people basically done to prove natural cure and that most problems are mental, using no treatment at all. Some examples are when doctors use non-medical pills (usually made of sugar) and makes the patients take them as if they were real ones; these pills are usually given as anti-depressants. Another example is fake surgeries where the subject is treated as if it was having a surgery but is actually not being done anything.

Henry K. Beecher was the first person to present this idea in the year 1955. He made around 800 different studies; one of the most outstanding experiments was one about colds where the patients felt better within six days of taking the placebo. Still 40% of the patients’ condition grew worse after taking the placebo pill. Beecher did not always expose all the data, he showed how 2/3 of the times placebo worked but did not mention how 1/3 worsened the condition. Beecher felt the urge to create another experiment to really prove his theory right. This consisted on three different groups of patients: the first didn’t get medicine, the second one got a placebo, and the last group got no treatment at all. The results favored Beecher when they revealed that the patients with the placebo and no treatment matched 100% proving that the placebo connects with mental.

Although placebo effects have been studied very well and proven to be right, a percentage of people continue doubting the evidence these studies provide about the effectiveness of the placebos. Placebo studies can result to be difficult because of many reasons; for example, the patients can react differently to please the experimenter or relating to the patients conditions itself seen as there are many levels of sickness. Also, the different treatments and its effects and also our perspective on what are improvements. Another point that is discussed is that sometimes in the fake surgeries, medicine or surgery is not necessary this contradicts if the placebo effect is indeed successful.

I believe that even though placebos are sometimes proven to be unsuccessful, truth is most of the times they work. Everything is in our heads: pain, love, depression, etc. unless the pain is caused by a fractured bone, I believe placebos would definitely work due to the brain and minds power over the rest of our whole body; tell your brain you feel sick when you’re perfectly fine and eventually you’ll start to feel sick, tell your mind you feel swell when you’re feeling sick and you’ll get better.